Reconciliation or Recrimination?

In these recent heady days where we jittery world-watchers are on alert yet again for an imminent US invasion of Iran, it is hard not to imagine a broader agenda at work when a federal judge orders Iran to pay $2.6 billion in compensation to the survivors and the bereaved of the devastating attack on the US Marine barracks at the Beirut airport in 1983. Of course, I will not project that Dick Cheney has been pulling the strings behind Judge Lamberth's ruling, but the timing of the decision no doubt emphasises its significance, and will give support to any political depiction of Iran as a current threat and historical enemy to America. It also seems a rather strange move.

The precedent seems to be Libya's agreement in 2002 to compensate the families of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, but the differences are clear. Libya's payment, combined with something of an admission of complicity in the atrocity, were part of Gaddaffi's post-9/11 rapprochement with the west - a consensual political gesture, not the result of a unilateral ruling by a foreign domestic court. Iran, of course, refuses to pay, to recognise the authority of the court, or to admit to any responsibility for the attack. One might ask what the point of such a ruling is, when there is no hope of any forthcoming payment.

The Lockerbie bombing was also by anyone's definition a terrorist attack and an act of murder, but can the same be said for the barracks bombing? The barracks, after all, were a military installation in the middle of a warzone. While political expediency in face of the War Powers Act meant that in Washington, the Reagan Administration insisted on defining the Marine deployment as a neutral peacekeeping force, the reality on the ground was that the Multinational Force was aligned on one side of a civil war. Though bound by stringent rules of engagement not to fight, the Marines' vague objective to protect the crumbling Lebanese Government and train its army marked them out as a clear enemy to the various militias vying for control of Beirut, and even, to a lesser and more indirect extent, the IDF. The barracks bombing, while villainous and atrocious, was an act of war - how many acts of war result in demands for compensation?. Can the families of the Marines killed by sniper fire expect a similar court ruling?

Other questions arise, such as why Syria, also considered to be involved in the creation of the early incarnation Hezbollah which is generally credited with the attack, has not received a similar order. Then there is the fact that the extent of Iranian involvement in the attack is simply not known - did Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen order it? plan it? carry it out? or did they just give it blessing? All this is uncertain, which makes the basis for the ruling shaky. Stretching the questions further we might ask how the US government would respond to demands that it pay compensation to the Iranian victims of Saddam's army using US-made conventional or chemical weapons - let alone the civilian victims of the Contras. The court ruling seems to have little real authority, whether in precedent, logic, or in practical result.

At its very worst, this decision is politically designed (even if simply by one man) to escalate American public hostility towards Iran. At its best, it is an attempt to give relief and a sense of justice to over a thousand still-grieving Americans whose boys died on a mission of the best intentions but ultimately with no meaning or consequence. Either way, it is an odd, and entirely symbolic, use of the US justice system.

Close Reagan Aide Dies

"My obit will probably say 'Close Reagan Aide Dies,'" predicted Michael Deaver in 1988, "that doesn't bother me a bit. That's my life." Perhaps an easy call, and proved correct this week in the responses to his death on Saturday at 69 - Reagan's age when he won the presidency. Scanning the obituaries, the focus is on Deaver's role in Reagan's circle, from Sacramento to Washington, as his publicist and image-maker - his "director." Along with the above, most quoted is his modest and intriguing claim that "the only thing I did was light him well. My job was filling up the space around the head. I didn’t make Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan made me.” Deaver's talent was not to manipulate or to pull the strings of the Reagan puppet, but to compliment and magnify Reagan's own gift for the visual and the emotive.

It is modest of Deaver to reduce his position to that of stagehand, his influence in the administration was considerable, steady and helpful. It was apparently Deaver's stance that at least in part solidified Reagan's reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and prompted the President's private recrimination of Begin, halting the attack. Deaver also worked (with Jim Baker) to minimise the influence of the militant Al Haig upon the President, perhaps softening US foreign policy as a whole, and effectively ending Haig's political career. It certainly seems true that had the White House remained under Deaver's, and Baker's, scrutiny into the second term, the Iran initiative may never have gotten off the ground, certainly wouldn't have been left in the hands of fanatics like Oliver North, and would never have emerged as such a threatening scandal. Deaver's influence on such areas, while perhaps disproportionate considering his lack of expertise in foreign policy, could at least be described as level headed and decent.

It was the symbolic packaging and presentation of Reagan that was his job, however, and for better or worse, he will be remembered as an early master of the image-centred politics that is so prevalent today.