Going All the Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, and the War in Lebanon

By Jonathan C. Randal. New York: The Viking Press, 1983. 304 pp. $16.75

Reviewed by Landrum R. Bolling

This is not a pretty story. Nor an amusing one, even though the author, a veteran Washington Post correspondent, uses a light touch wherever he can show the human absurdities with which he is dealing. What he has written is an even-handed accounting of the vast, complex tragedy that has befallen Lebanon and of the foolish, perverse, inhuman behavior—by Lebanese of assorted loyalties, Palestinians, Syrians, and Israelis—that produced this national catastrophe. It is also at least a partial documentation of the inept, naive and irresponsible manner in which the mighty United States used, misused and failed to use its great powers, thus compounding the problems of Lebanon and of the whole area.

The Historic Roots

Although most of the book is concerned with events since the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-76, with particular attention to the Israeli invasion of June, 1982, and its aftermath, Randal, very sensibly and helpfully, weaves in enough Middle Eastern history to give even the uninitiated some sobering sense of the deep historic roots of Lebanon's troubles. However unwelcome the Palestinians were and still are, they did not initiate the religious and political bloodletting. However brutal and exploitive the Syrian and Israeli occupations both became (and still are), there were substantial numbers of Lebanese who, for their own good reasons, welcomed these outside forces as liberators, friends, and "peacekeepers." That, in both cases, the Lebanese supporters of these outsiders soon turned against their allies and wanted to be rid of them should have surprised no one.

The capacity of people of influence, power, and knowledge of the region to be surprised—to misjudge the likelihood of horrible events and their consequences—is one of the shadow themes of the whole volume.

The Lebanese Christians who invited the Syrians in originally thought they could make an advantageous deal with them. In the end they got pounded by Syrian guns.
The PLO and their Lebanese leftist allies thought they, predominantly Muslim, could count on a supportive alliance with the Muslim Syrians. The Syrians tried to subvert and control the PLO.
The Lebanese Maronites thought they could get arms, money and military training from the Israelis, and the rest of the Arab world wouldn't find out. The Israeli leaders bragged about their Christian Lebanese wards to the Knesset and the whole world.
The Israelis, or at least General Sharon, thought they could count on the Lebanese Christian militias they had armed to help them destroy the PLO in Beirut. They refused.
The Lebanese Christians thought the powerful and competent Israelis, led by the swashbuckling Sharon, would march right in and kill off all the PLO trapped in West Beirut. Sharon wasn't prepared to run the risk of the casualties his own forces would have to accept if he undertook to root out Arafat's men.
Both Sharon and the Christian Phalange leaders were sure that, once the noose was tightened around the PLO in Beirut and the massive Israeli bombardment got going, Arafat and his men would collapse and surrender. They fought the Israelis longer, more tenaciously than any other Arab force the Israelis had come up against.

Randal speaks vividly of the three worst days of the Israeli siege, August 1, 4 and 11, when West Beirut was subjected "to punishment so intensive and indiscriminate that terror was the result, whatever the Israelis' objective may have been." This reviewer was there on two of those days, and that is the way he remembers the experience, too.

The U.S. Role

Although Randal is remarkably balanced in his harsh judgments of the Maronite militias and their leaders, and highly critical of both the Syrians and the Palestinians (to whom he gives lesser space), it is his treatment of the Americans and their policies that leaves the American reader most depressed. Have we really guessed so badly so often? Have we really been so inattentive when such high stakes were involved? Have we really allowed the Israelis to exploit us so shamelessly and treat us so contemptuously? The record that Randal cites suggests that the painful answer is: Yes, to all of the above. The title to one of the chapters says a lot: "The Offhand Americans."

If more of us would ponder the implications of what Randal has written, maybe our span of attention, our depth of concern about our own interests and the real interests of those we want to befriend might change. Offhandedness is not a very good approach for the formation and implementation of American policy toward one of the most critical areas in all the world any longer—if it ever was.

The U.S. Middle East professionals would, of course, deny that they have been off-handed, but they would not likely try to refute Randal's suggestions that the Congress and the President have been and are.

Landrum Bolling has been Research Professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service for two years.