I give President Reagan a lot of credit for putting the US military back together after it had been destroyed by the post-Vietnam era. I won't even point fingers at who destroyed it.
I was talking about Ronnie's general hawkishness and was confronted with, "What about Beruit? One explosion and he put his tail between his legs and ran."
I did some digging. I am sure that someone like Weinberger whispered in his ear, "Sir, our military is in no shape to stay and fight."
In 1983, it wasn't. By 1985 it had recovered. I had several sergeants who talked about the bad old days.
Look at the timelines a bit. Reagan took office in January 1981. By October '83 there was no way the changes he'd called for to have started to happen.
I joined the Army in late 1987. I saw for myself the tail end of the bad days. If you root around a bit you'll see that the military replaced a lot of weapons in the Reagan era. Like the M-1911A1 with the M9. I trained on both in Basic and did not see a single issue one before I left in 1990. Like the M1A1 Abrams; the unit I joined had M60A3s when I got there and received 105mm M1(IP)s just after. The M1 had been in service, officially, since 1979, but line units stationed in Germany were only just getting them in 1987! How about the AH-64A Apache? The 1st Infantry Division (Forward) was still using Cobras in 1989.
And just a very short time after I left the Army, it won against Iraq in less than two weeks of ground combat.
Weinberger was correct when he advised Reagan to not go to Beruit. My libtard "friend" is correct, we did cut and run; he's wrong that it was an act of cowardice that was inconsistent with the persona of Mr Reagan. To stay would just have gotten men killed for no reason other than his pride, and it was a rational decision to leave. It was also the last time we backed down during his presidency. Notice what happened in 1985 with the hijackers of the Achille Lauro (and thanks for nothing Italy). Notice Operation Praying Mantis (aka Sink-Ex 88). Notice the response to the "Line of Death".
Sun Tzu has advice that was apparently taken here.
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