Lots of Players in the Syria-Lebanon Drama

Re “Syrian Troops Will Redeploy Closer to Border, Leaders Say,” March 8: Would someone please explain, in an unemotional voice, why we want the Syrian army out of Lebanon. Doesn’t anyone in the State Department remember why the Syrian army went there in the first place?

Has everyone forgotten the 241 Americans who died when the Marines’ barracks were truck-bombed at the Beirut Airport? Has everyone forgotten about the approximately 100,000 dead in the civil war as beautiful Beirut, the “Paris of the Middle East,” was reduced to rubble? Has everyone forgotten the Israeli army having to occupy southern Lebanon to keep the resident Palestinians from launching rockets into northern Israeli towns? Has everyone forgotten the Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Druze, Palestinians and Christians all armed to the teeth and intent on killing everyone else?

All of those factions are still there, and all of the passions have been passed to a new generation. The only thing holding them in check is the Syrian army enforcing the “Green Line” truce that keeps the factions confined to their respective territories.

It is not surprising, with the current administration’s domestic agenda coming unglued, that the spin merchants would want to distract us with the “success” of their foreign adventures. But, just this once, couldn’t we consider the consequences of our actions and resist the temptation to toss hand grenades into one of the few spots of relative calm in that part of the world?

Clint Everett

San Diego

Doesn’t anyone remember Oct. 23, 1983, in Beirut when a truck bomb exploded and 241 U.S. military personnel were blown to kingdom come. We Americans were outraged. A couple of days later, the U.S. invaded Grenada. Public attention shifted there, and soon Lebanon was forgotten.

Now there’s this bloody quagmire in Iraq -- more than 1,500 Americans already dead. Quickly, before the public wakes up to this catastrophe, how about another one of those diversionary attacks, say against Syria.

J.R. Kent

Huntington Beach

The student demonstrations in Beirut, being shown on television news, seemed very strange in one aspect. All of the signs that are being brandished, exhorting the Syrians to leave Lebanon, are in English. I realize that Beirut was a very cosmopolitan city at one time, but [its residents’] first language is definitely Lebanese.

Is it possible that these demonstrations are being staged for U.S. television, using paid “demonstrators” mixed in with a few students? If this is the case, in whose interest would it be for the Syrians to leave Lebanon?

The signs held by the Hezbollah people in support of Syria in Lebanon appear to be in Arabic.

I’m really beginning to question everything that I see on the evening news -- it all feels like “Wag the Dog.”

Emiliana Guzman

Los Angeles