Monday’s Class………

Gave out test of 10 questions and gave class 30 minutes to complete….

After a short break class began with me reminding them that this was the last week of class……I told the students because the class was progressing slowly thanx to the interests they had in discussing the different aspects of US Middle East foreign policy the class would not get in all the points I was hoping to make…told them that Monday of next week would be the final and that it would be a 50 question test, all inclusive to the material covered, it would consist of 20 multiple choice….10 true or false……15 fill in the blank and 5 essay (no minimum word count as long as the question was answered)…..

Today we cover the Reagan years……..

Contrary to popular belief it was Carter that got the hostages released not Reagan…….

Reagan Administration, 1981-1989

Whatever progress the Carter administration achieved on the Israeli-Palestinian front stalled over the next decade. As the Lebanese civil war raged, Israel invaded Lebanon for the second time, in June 1982, advancing as far as Beirut, the Lebanese capital city, before Reagan, who had condoned the invasion, intervene to demand a cease-fire.

American, Italian and French troops landed in Beirut that summer to mediate the exit of 6,000 PLO militants. The troops then withdrew, only to precipitately return following the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemeyel and the retaliatory massacre, by Israeli-backed Christian militias, of up to 3,000 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, south of Beirut.

In April 1983, a truck bomb demolished the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. On Oct. 23, 1983, simultaneous bombings killed 241 American soldiers and 57 French paratroopers in their Beirut barracks. American forces withdrew shortly after. The Reagan administration the faced several crises as the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite organization that became known as Hezbollah took several Americans hostage in Lebanon.

The 1986 Iran-Contra affair revealed that the Reagan Administration had secretly negotiated arms-for-hostages deals with Iran, discrediting Reagan’s claim that he would not negotiate with terrorists. It would be December 1991 before the last hostage, former Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson, would be released.

Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan Administration supported Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied territories. The administration also supported Saddam Hussein in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which ended in 1988. The administration provided logistical and intelligence support, believing, wrongly, that Saddam could destabilize the Iranian regime and defeat the Islamic Revolution.

Basically Reagan did little to improve the US situation in the Middle East……

Handout…….

Source: Ronald Reagan’s surprising legacy in the Middle East

Short break…….

The George H.W. Bush years

Bush1 continued the policies of Reagan when it came to Israel/Palestine….but he will be forever known as the president that kicked Saddam’s butt in the first Gulf War….keep in mind Saddam did not surrender…..the USA coalition and Iraq agreed to a ceasefire which ended the conflict….

George H.W. Bush Administration, 1989-1993.

After benefiting from a decade of support from the United States and receiving conflicting signals immediately before the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein invaded the small country to his southeast on Aug. 2, 1990. President Bush launched Operation Desert Shield, immediately deploying U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia to defend against a possible invasion by Iraq.

Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm when Bush shifted strategy – from defending Saudi Arabia to repelling Iraq from Kuwait, ostensibly because Hussein might, Bush claimed, be developing nuclear weapons. A coalition of 30 nations joined American forces in a military operation that numbered more than half a million troops.

An additional 18 countries supplied economic and humanitarian aid.

After a 38-day air campaign and a 100-hour ground war, Kuwait was liberated. Bush stopped the assault short of an invasion of Iraq, fearing what Dick Cheney, his defense secretary, would call a “quagmire.” Bush established instead “no-fly zones” in the south and north of the country, but those didn’t keep Hussein from massacring Shiites following an attempted revolt in the south — which Bush had encouraged — and Kurds in the north.

In Israel and the Palestinian territories, Bush was largely ineffective and uninvolved as the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, roiled on for four years.

In the last year of his presidency, Bush launched a military operation in Somalia in conjunction with a humanitarian operation by the United Nations.

Operation Restore Hope, involving 25,000 U.S. troops, was designed to help stem the spread of famine caused by the Somali civil war.

The operation had limited success. A 1993 attempt to catch Mohamed Farah Aidid, leader of a brutal Somali militia, ended in disaster, with 18 American soldiers and up to 1,500 Somali militias and civilians killed.

Aidid wasn’t caught.

Among the architects of the attacks on Americans in Somalia: a Saudi exile then living in the Sudan, largely unknown in the United States: Osama bin Laden.

Handout…….

Source: George W. Bush on Foreign Policy

Source: The George H.W. Bush Administration | The Iran Primer

Class discussion…..I anticipated that there would be interest on what I said about the end of the conflict….I passed out a handout that I thought would help in the discussion…..

Source: The Infamous Vehicle Graveyard of Iraq’s Highway of Death | Urban Ghosts

The Iraqi army was in retreat from Kuwait along Highway 80 and the coalition forces attacked and attacked…wiping out everything that moved…..once the pics of the carnage was released Bush could see a PR nightmare in the making so he immediately declared a ceasefire and the ops ceased……

Class discussion………

This concludes my writing day…..hope to see everyone tomorrow….have a day and be happy…..chuq