Reagan’s Rules for Military Action pt.2

The Communist government of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was overthrown by an even more radical group of Marxists. Now the new government — having freshly executed Bishop — was refusing a State Department request to send an American diplomat to arrange for the safe departure of 800 American medical students studying on the island. In other words, 800 young Americans were now officially hostages on Grenada.

Reagan was determined. There would be no repeat of the JFK Bay of Pigs disaster, a disaster that launched further crises with the Soviets as it sent a message of weakness. Both the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis had resulted. Reagan would have none of that. He believed the Communist presence on Grenada to be a direct threat to United States national security. He also believed he had the authority as commander-in-chief to protect the lives of those American kids. Now, with the urgent request for help from the OECS, his earlier instruction to have a naval flotilla that had just departed for Lebanon diverted to Grenada just in case had paid off. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said they could be ready to do a rescue mission and take out the Marxist government in 48 hours.

Said the President in two short words: “Do it.”

Under cloak of secrecy — Reagan did not want any leaks—the invasion of Grenada was getting ready to roll. The President went back to bed.

An hour later, he got up to play his scheduled golf game.

Suddenly, on the 16th hole, Secret Service agents abruptly surrounded the President and his golf party, shoving them into White House limousines and raced him back to Eisenhower Cottage.

An armed gunman had smashed his pick-up truck through the entry gate of the golf course and taken control of the pro-shop, where seven White House aides had set up a very different kind of shop. He was threatening to kill them all unless Reagan agreed to meet with him. The Secret Service was apoplectic. They wanted the President out of there on the spot, on Air Force One and back to Washington. Reagan wouldn’t hear of it. Instead he picked up the phone and called the pro-shop. The gunman picked up the phone to hear the familiar voice say: “Hello, this is Ronald Reagan…”

There was silence. Then the gunman hung up and the line went dead. Reagan tried again—four more times. Each time with the same result. The armed man had sent word that he wanted to meet Reagan personally. The Secret Service said absolutely not. They were out searching the golf course and the woods around the golf course to see if there was more than just this one guy. They found no one—but kept after Reagan to go back to Washington, pronto. Knowing that he had only hours ago secretly ordered the invasion of Grenada, not wanting to raise the specter of impending crisis with the media, Reagan refused and stayed put. Eventually the gunman was persuaded to release his hostages unharmed and he was arrested. 

Reagan went on with his schedule, which by now meant dinner with friends. Then, tired from being up half the night, he went to bed.

At 2:30 in the morning, Bud McFarlane was on the phone yet again. This time it wasn’t about Grenada or the gunman.

A suicide bomber had driven into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and first reports said there were 100 dead Marines. That did it.

After another pajama and robe clad meeting with McFarlane and George Shultz, by 6:30 a.m. the President was on Air Force One headed back to Washington. The hell with the golf.

The attack in Beirut, he was learning, was more horrific than first thought. The final death toll was 241 Marines, all murdered as they slept. In a pattern that would years later become familiar to Americans in events as disparate as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, minutes after the first attack came a second. In the case of Beirut that second attack came two minutes after the first, the second attack at a building housing the MFN peacekeeping force’s French paratroopers. Fifty-eight of the French were killed. 

The Grenada invasion was a success. Launched in secrecy, it rescued the 800 American medical students, overturned the Marxist revolutionaries, discovered thousands of Russian and Cuban-supplied weapons, plus literally a million rounds of ammunition hidden in a false floor in the now-empty Cuban Embassy. There was a treasure trove of documents that tied the Grenadian Marxists to Moscow and Castro [And to Ron Dellums (D. Ca.), the congressman representing Oakland Ca. exposing his relationship to the Grenadian Marxists, both factions.], revealing the suspected objective of making Grenada the third Communist outpost in the Caribbean after Cuba and Nicaragua. Grenada was being designed to make of the Caribbean a Communist lake in America’s back yard.

But if Grenada was a success — it is a peaceful democracy to this day — what was going on in Beirut was an utter failure. Most importantly, Reagan knew it.