“Peacekeeping” Missions
In 1788 Patrick Henry complained of the newly forming United States government: “It squints towards monarchy”. Today we have a monarchy in plain view. Our military has suffered casualties on foreign soil under every commander in chief since the 1930’s. We lost servicemen in Iran during the Carter administration, this time as part of a failed covert rescue operation. Apparently the 1979 siege of our embassy in Tehran caught the CIA off guard.
Over 200 Marines were killed in their barracks during a 1982 peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Shortly thereafter, President Reagan ordered an invasion of Grenada, a tiny country in the Caribbean. Our covert operatives then got involved in a Nicaraguan civil war, and that conflict spilled over into El Salvador and Honduras. Congress debated the matter before trying to limit American military involvement in the region. But the Boland Amendment to the defense appropriations bill of 1982 had a limited impact on our Central American activities. Reagan also ordered air strikes on Libya in 1986 without congressional approval.
George H.W. Bush claimed to be protecting American lives when he launched an invasion of Panama in 1989. General Manuel Noriega, the former leader of the Panamanian military, ended up in a Miami jail after having been on the CIA payroll for decades. Congress seemingly had no say in the matter. Then again, our armed forces have been deployed in Panama since the turn of the last century.
Commander In Chief, Panama, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush
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