Dug In and Taking Losses

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The 28 U.S. Navy planes that attacked Syrian positions in Lebanon early Fast week were meant to send a message to the government of President Hafez Assad: for every Syrian strike against American forces, such as the previous day's firing on U.S. reconnaissance planes, expect a strike in return. Unfortunately, delivering the message proved costly: two planes lost, one pilot killed, one captured, a Lebanese woman dead in the crash of one of the fighter-bombers. The air attack also sent a number of unintended messages. It told the Lebanese that the U.S. armed forces are neither invincible nor invulnerable. It told the Israelis that the newly revived concept of "strategic cooperation" between Washington and Jerusalem means that Israel should stay in Lebanon and help the U.S. fight Syria. It told the American people and their Congress that, whatever the U.S. role in Lebanon may be, the safety of American fighting men there must be improved and their purpose more clearly defined. It told the Administration that its Middle East policy may need some serious rethinking. Finally, it told the world that in any kind of Middle East peace negotiations, Syria simply cannot be ignored (see those story).

The week was a nine-ring circus of death and despair. After Sunday's raid came an intensive artillery barrage by Syrian-backed Druze militiamen, resulting in the death of eight U.S. Marines near Beirut International Airport. In Beirut itself, a car bomb exploded in a crowded street, killing 14 people. Nobody was apprehended, and as usual, the list of suspects was endless. Next day a terrorist bomb exploded on a crowded bus in Jerusalem, killing five Israelis and wounding 45 others. For this senseless slaughter, two warring branches of the Palestine Liberation Organization, including the mainstream group led by Chairman Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility. A day later, Arafat's group admitted making the attack but said it had made a mistake and hit the wrong bus. The recantation came too late. Presumably in response to the bus bombing, Israeli missile boats shelled Arafat's redoubt at the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli, from which the P.L.O. chairman was trying to arrange an exit for himself and the dwindling forces still loyal to him.

No less disturbing were the political and diplomatic questions raised by the latest events. The Lebanese, inured as they are to the endless fighting, showed few signs of being able to achieve any sort of national reconciliation.

The Syrians, despite the widely reported but still unexplained illness of President Assad, were determinedly pursuing their objectives in Lebanon and openly boasting about their military prowess in the face of the U.S. air attack. The Egyptians, whose peace treaty with Israel, orchestrated by the U.S. at Camp David, ranks as the most significant diplomatic achievement in the Middle East during the past decade, were publicly expressing shock over Washington's newly proclaimed alignment with Israel. In France, Italy and Britain, critics of those countries' commitments to the MultiNational Force in Lebanon were urging a pullout, though all three U.S. allies reaffirmed that they would leave their troops in place at least for the time being.