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 US Foreign Policy and the
Multinational Force in Lebanon
 Corrin Varady

US Foreign Policy
and the
Multinational Force
in Lebanon
Vigorous Self-Defense
Corrin Varady
Institute of Digital Education Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa

ISBN 978-3-319-53972-0 ISBN 978-3-319-53973-7 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53973-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939870

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

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Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to acknowledge the extraordinary people of Lebanon

whose resilience and positivity captivated me during my years in Beirut.
Thank you to my Lebanese friends Vicken Vanlian and Samer Sakr for
their generosity and support.
I would like to thank my supervisor at the London School of
Economics (LSE), Associate Professor Kirsten Schulze who inspired me
to make that first trip to Lebanon and who has guided me through the
various iterations of this book. Thank you also goes to Professor Fawaz
Gerges from the LSE for his time and support in publishing this research.
A very special thank you goes to Louisa Greene from the LSE for her
encouragement, and deepest appreciation goes to Dr. Kaoukab Chebaro,
Claude Matar and Hrag Vosgerichian from the American University of
Beirut Archives as well as Drs. Fawaz Traboulsi and Dr. Aliya Saidi from
the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the AUB for their
outstanding expertise on all things Lebanese.
I owe a big thanks to US Archivists Ray Wilson, Keith Shuler and Mary
Burtzloff at the Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Dwight D. Eisenhower
Archives as well as Amanda Leinberger at the United Nations Archives in
New York.
This book is ultimately dedicated to my parents, Dr. Margaret and
Dr. Miklos Varady, without whom it would never have been completed.

v
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Lebanon: A Crowded State Without a Nation 21

3 Discontinuity and Legacy: US Policy in Lebanon

and the Middle East 45

4 Operation Peace for Galilee and the Establishment

of the MNFI 77

5 Return of the Marines and the Multinational Force II 111

6 The Soviet-Syrian Alliance and the Battle of Souk el Gharb 143

7 The Marine Barracks Bombing and a ‘Vigorous

Self-Defense’ 167

8 Leaving Through the Back Door: The Final Days

of the US Intervention in Lebanon 211

9 Conclusion: Lessons for the Future: The Use of Force

in a Peacemaking Intervention 243

vii
viii CONTENTS

Bibliography 255

Index 271
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AAPSS The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
AIPAC American Israel Public Affairs Committee
APP American Presidency Project
AWACS Airborne Warning and Control Systems
CENTO Central Eastern Treaty Organization
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CLOHP Carter Library Oral History Project
CMF Combined Maritime Forces
CPPG Crisis Pre-Planning Group
DDEPL Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
DNC Democratic National Committee
DNSA Digital National Security Archive
DOD Department of Defence
DOSA Department of State Archives
DSB Department of State Bulletin
FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office
FMS Foreign Military Supplies
FOIA Freedom of Information Act
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
GOL Government of Lebanon
IDF Israeli Defence Force
IPPRC International Public Policy Research Corporation
IPS Institute for Palestine Studies
JCPL Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

ix
x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

JVL Jewish Virtual Library

L’OLJ L’Orient Le Jour
LAF Lebanese Armed Forces
LAT Los Angeles Times
LOC Library of Congress
MAPS Military Assistance Programs
MARG Mediterranean Amphibious Ready Group
MAU Marine Amphibious Units (United States)
Memcon Memorandum of conversation
METO Middle East Treaty Organization
MFO Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai
MNF Multinational Force in Lebanon
MNFI First Multinational Force (18 August – 10 September 1982)
MNFII Second Multinational Force (20 September 1982 – 30 March 1984)
NARA National Archives and Record Administration
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NER Near East Report
NPO Popular Nasserite Organization
NSA National Security Affairs
NSC National Security Council
NSDD National Security Decision Directive
NSPG National Security Planning Group
NYT The New York Times
ONA Office of National Assessment
OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
PLO Palestine Liberation Organization
PPP Public Papers of the Presidents
PREM British Prime Minister’s Papers
PRM Presidential Review Memorandum
RAC Remote Archive Capture Program
ROE Rules of Engagement
RRPL Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
SAF Syrian Armed Forces
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
SAM Surface-to-Air Missile
SARG Syrian Arab Republic Government
SFRC Senate Foreign Relations Committee
TARP Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod
UKNA United Kingdom National Archives
UNARMS United Nations Archives and Records Management Section
UNIFIL United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi

UNSC United Nations Security Council

USG United States Government
USMNF United States Marine contingent of the MNFII
WHCF White House Central File
WP The Washington Post
WSJ The Wall Street Journal
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

On 25 August 1982, Reagan appealed to the heroism of the 850 US

marines who were bound for Lebanon under the Multinational Force
(MNF),1 stating that ‘you are tasked to be once again what Marines
have been for more than 200 years – peacemakers’.2 The Reagan
Administration charged the Marines with a mission, beyond the realms
of the UN or NATO, to intervene militarily in what Reagan called ‘this
long-tortured city’.3 The Multinational Force I (MNFI) arrived as a
limited force of fewer than 2,000 international troops, entrusted with
overseeing the implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire agree-
ment and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters’ expe-
ditious withdrawal from Beirut.
Following the massacre of many hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese
civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, from 16 to 18
September 1982, Reagan held a press conference at the Oval Office,
declaring that ‘there is little that words can add, but there are actions we
can and must take to bring that nightmare to an end’.4 Little did Reagan
realise that his commitment to action over words would mark the begin-
ning of a nightmare for the US itself.
As Reagan unwittingly committed himself to a violent conflict, he failed
to realise that this would eventually have tragic and humiliating conse-
quences for the US in general and his Administration in particular. By
October 1983, the presence of the Multinational Force II (MNFII) had
escalated to 5,800, French, Italian and British troops.5 The intensification

© The Author(s) 2017 1

C. Varady, US Foreign Policy and the Multinational Force in Lebanon,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53973-7_1
2 1 INTRODUCTION

of the conflict and the MNFII’s offensive engagement led to the force
sustaining devastating casualties. By 17 February 1984, with the final
withdrawal of the US marine contingent from Lebanon and redeployment
of the Marine Amphibious Units (MAU) back to the Mediterranean Sea,
the key decision-makers in the Reagan Administration questioned if any
good had come from the US intervention in Lebanon.6 Indeed, this was a
time for reflection. The US had withdrawn without completing any of its
initial mission objectives and left Lebanon as a failed state, still plagued
with violent sectarian and regional conflict.7 In reference to the US inter-
vention in Lebanon, US Secretary of State, George Shultz, stated, ‘I can’t
resist using that old image that the light you see at the end of the tunnel
may be the train coming towards you.’8
This book examines peacemaking and the use of military intervention in
US foreign policy in Lebanon from 1982 to 1984. The Reagan
Administration’s intervention through the deployment of the MNF is an
example of a questionable US operation that sought to bring peace
through the use of military force. Outlining five major phases of US policy,
this study will consider the period from August 1982, following Israel’s
Operation Peace for Galilee, until the withdrawal of US Marines and the
collapse of the MNFII in February 1984. The focus of this analysis is the
shift in US policy from peacemaking to the use of military force. Several
key research questions relating to US policy in Lebanon and the MNF are
answered, namely; was Lebanon of such strategic importance for the US as
a policy frontline that Reagan risked the possibility of long-term conflict?
What were the key drivers affecting US policy in Lebanon, specifically in
relation to the Israeli, Syrian, Palestinian and Soviet influence? Was the use
of military force responsible for the MNFI and MNFII’s inefficiencies and
failures?
This project advances three broad arguments regarding US policy in
Lebanon and the MNF’s history. First, building upon the dominant
academic views that claim that the MNF (both MNFI and MNFII) was
an example of a failed military-led peacekeeping mission, it will be
argued that US policy in Lebanon was conceptually flawed due to
the Reagan Administration’s failure to accurately recognise Lebanon’s
complex consociational and sectarian dynamics.9 One example of such
miscalculation was Shultz and Reagan’s unwavering support for
Christian Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, whose political impo-
tence in the crisis impeded the process of national reconciliation and
unity.10
 INTRODUCTION 3

Second, the newly elected Reagan Administration became involved in

Lebanon because Reagan saw this as an easy way to resolve several
Palestinian-Israeli issues. If successful, the MNFI intervention could have
been Reagan’s equivalent of the Camp David Accords mediated by
President Jimmy Carter. Instead, the deployment of the US military
force weakened Reagan’s commitment to peacekeeping and quickly esca-
lated US military engagement. As a result, this created an uncontrollable
spiral of offensive and defensive policy measures, thus transforming the
US-led peacekeeping force into an active party in the internal Lebanese
crisis. By committing themselves to unrealistic, lofty goals, Reagan and
Shultz unintentionally bonded themselves to resolving both the complex
Lebanese and the wider regional conflict, which the US neither under-
stood nor could handle.
Third, the Reagan Administration’s biggest mistake was the establish-
ment of the MNFII in September 1982, as its construction was imprac-
tical, ambiguous and even – in the words of Colin Powell – ‘goofy from
the beginning’.11 It was never the Reagan Administration’s intention to
become offensively engaged in the Lebanese crisis. However, with the
creation of the MNFII’s free wielding principles and incremental escala-
tion policies, particularly regarding the use of military force, the US
became trapped. Avoiding a public defeat became the Reagan
Administration’s primary focus as it struggled to protect its credibility.
This study is structured chronologically in accordance with the five
phases of US policy in Lebanon from 1982 to 1984. Chapter 2 outlines
the history of Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil War from the foundation of
the modern state to the outbreak of the initial Christian-Palestinian conflict
and finally the 1982 Israeli invasion to provide background and context for
the subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 outlines the history of US policy and
decision-making in the Middle East and Lebanon, specifically focusing on
two key periods, the Eisenhower Administration’s intervention under
Operation Blue Bat in 1958 and the Carter Administration’s non-interven-
tionist policy from 1978 to 1981. This background illustrates the US
foreign policy context and more specifically the discontinuities in US policy
in Lebanon prior to Reagan’s intervention.
Chapter 4 discusses the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and
the PLO in Lebanon as a backdrop to the eventual landing of US troops
and the MNFI’s inauguration from 26 August to 10 September 1982. It
argues that the MNFI was established in order to enable Reagan to leave
his mark on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and illustrate his
4 1 INTRODUCTION

Administration’s interventionist foreign policy. Chapter 5 examines the

MNFII’s first phase, namely, the decision for US marines to return to
Lebanon on 20 September 1982, and posits that the MNFII’s mandate
was so ambiguous that it eventually led to the force’s ‘interposition’
between the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and the Syrian Armed Forces
(SAF). The chapter also outlines Shultz’s involvement in the Israeli-
Lebanese May 17th Agreement as a diplomatic means for the US to
prepare for a possible withdrawal. Chapter 6 deals with the Soviet-Syrian
alliance due to the increasing US-Syrian tensions in 1983 and the
MNFII’s operational evolution from ‘peacemaking’ to ‘aggressive self
defense’ to, finally, ‘vigorous self defense’. It argues that, due to the
failure of US diplomatic attempts to coerce Israel and Syria to reach a
lasting ceasefire, the Reagan Administration moved towards an escalation
of the MNFII and establishment of a separate US military force.
Chapters 5 and 6 also posit that the MNFII’s mandate had changed so
significantly since the MNFI’s initial deployment in 1982 that no sem-
blance of peacekeeping remained by October 1983, and that this change
was directly responsible for the US becoming an active target within the
Lebanese conflict. Chapter 7 examines US responses to the 23 October
1983 US Marine Barracks bombing and its impact on US military
strategy in Lebanon. It argues that the bombings placed the Reagan
Administration under great domestic and congressional pressure to with-
draw quickly and therefore find a credible, face-saving exit from the
Lebanese crisis. Chapter 8 covers the final days of the US in Lebanon,
with Reagan and Shultz’s attempts to secure a last-ditch success. This
chapter discusses how the Reagan Administration resigned Lebanon’s
fate to Syrian dominance and examines how Shultz and Reagan distanced
themselves from the humiliation of the MNFII’s failure. The final two
chapters suggest that US policy at the end of the MNFII was determined
exclusively by the need to find a face-saving exit for US troops rather
than due to any concern about stability or security in Lebanon.
This book provides a comprehensive, detailed analysis of the executive
level US decision-making during the Lebanese Civil War from 1982 to
1984, based on US documents that have only recently been declassified. It
also adds to the existing scholarly literature on the Civil War, especially the
‘internal’ and non-Christian narratives of the conflict. Finally, and most
importantly, the research findings re-calibrate the historical judgment of
the intervention by proposing an alternative framework. Rather than
focusing on whether or not the initial mission objectives were executed
 INTRODUCTION 5

effectively, this book posits that a thorough examination of the thinking

behind the mandates, orders and escalations is required in order to truly
determine the success or failure of US policy in Lebanon. An in-depth
analysis of the ways in which the mandates continually changed through-
out the deployment of the MNF will demonstrate that Lebanon, in the
early 1980s, represented an untenable landscape that neither the UN nor
the US could possibly control.12
While this book does not undertake a comprehensive analysis of US
foreign policy-making, it will draw upon the leading approaches that apply
to the Reagan Administration’s intervention in Lebanon. The initial deci-
sion to intervene under the MNFI followed a rational decision-making
model whereby the Administration outlined areas of national interest and
how the net benefit of the opportunities for the Administration seemingly
outweighed the potential risks.13 However, subsequent decisions revolved
around indeterminate, reactionary diplomatic and military responses to
the changing, uncontrollable Lebanese context best seen through the
incremental decision-making model.14 With this incremental decision-
making came greater input from other levels of executive decision-making
within Washington, thus diluting the structure of rational decision-mak-
ing, as illustrated under a bureaucratic political approach.15
This book also draws upon the risk aversion theory suggested by
Kahneman and Tversky’s ‘Prospect Theory’, which argues that decision-
makers will be risk averse when decisions relate to specific gains and risk
seeking when decisions involve a certain loss. This counters the traditional
decision-making proposition suggested by Bernoulli’s ‘Expected Utility
Theory’, which states that a decision-maker will choose between risky
decisions by comparing the expected value. Prospect Theory allows this
research to challenge the view that Reagan and Shultz’ continual policy
amendments occurred not because they calculated the potential or
expected gains but rather in the face of significant loss.16 This will create
a more comprehensive US-Lebanese model, beyond the MNF interven-
tion alone, considering the bureaucratic politics and inter-organisational
models of International Relations.17
Another key area that this case study in Lebanon highlights is the
definitional difference between ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘peacemaking’. While
these two terms are often used interchangeably, this book illustrates how
operational structure and responsibility can lead a well-intentioned peace-
keeping force, attempting to placate armed parties during a conflict, into a
position of peacemaking, with a high level of responsibility by the
6 1 INTRODUCTION

intervening country or force to find long-term peace. Reagan definitely

saw the US as ‘peacemakers’ in Lebanon as his August 1982 speech
illustrated. But the responsibility that this required was far greater than
the Reagan Administration expected or could guarantee. Therefore, this
book looks at whether or not peacemaking, especially with the use of
military force, is a realistic approach to conflict.

A COLD WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST? A HISTORIOGRAPHY

OF REAGAN, THE SOVIETS AND THE MNF

Since the landing of US marines in Lebanon in 1958 under President

Eisenhower’s Operation Blue Bat, analysts and political scientists have
questioned the US intervention in Lebanon’s motives and objectives.18
Although several seminal works have focused on the Lebanese Civil Wars,
Eisenhower’s intervention, US policy in the Middle East and Arab-Israeli
conflict, limited primary archival work has been undertaken on the 1982–
1984 MNFI and MNFII deployments.19 Although this book examines
US policy construction and the deployment of the MNF in Lebanon, it is
also important to outline the Reagan Administration’s construction of US
foreign policy more broadly as well as the existing historical narratives
regarding the MNF in Lebanon. US involvement in the broader Arab-
Israeli conflict has inspired scholars to produce narratives that focus on the
international or regional instabilities.20 However, the 1975–1990
Lebanese Civil War’s internal political and military complexities also pro-
vide a rich historical context essential to the narrative of this book.
Given the contested associated narratives of US foreign policy, it is impor-
tant to outline the perspectives relevant to the Reagan Administration and
foreign policy decision-making.21 Alden, Aran, Scott and Peterson highlight
the importance of the executive level leadership in the Reagan Administration’s
construction of US foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically focusing on
the Reagan-Shultz relationship.22 However, Manley argues that the National
Security Council and Congress’ influence rendered isolated Presidential or
Oval Office foreign policy decisions almost impossible. Lindsay, Sayrs and
Steger also argue that the Administration’s policy decisions were even more
accountable to domestic public opinion than to the machinations of Capitol
Hill.23
Reagan is often characterised as an aggressive, confrontational ‘Rambo-
style’ figure, whose foreign policy was merely a reverberation of bold
 A COLD WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST? A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF REAGAN . . . 7

ideological and doctrinal battles.24 From this archetype of the ‘trigger-

happy cowboy’ grew the broader, more relevant discourse of US imperi-
alism in the 1980s.25 The degree to which the Reagan Administration
considered global interventionism as a primary foreign policy goal is seen,
in Lebanon’s case, through the US’ emerging international identity as the
global peacemaker. As this book illustrates Reagan’s confrontation of
world issues did not come from his belief in military force but rather
driven by his desire to be the strong world leader. The lasting effects of
the Vietnam War bound the US to a more subtle imperialist policy, where
Reagan’s confrontational, impulsive rhetoric had to be equally measured
with caution and rationality. The international and domestic US context
in the 1970s was politically relevant to US foreign policy choices in the
1980s as it created both limitations of absolute executive power and
substantive momentum with regard to certain policy areas. Every US
President also experienced a diminished sense of freedom following the
Vietnam War (especially at an Agency level, such as the Central
Intelligence Agency, CIA).26 The Vietnam War left behind a more
engaged American public, resulting in all public foreign policy missions
being open to criticism by both Congress and the general public. As
Manley and Layne note, the Vietnam War’s legacy left Reagan with both
public and legalistic challenges with regard to pursuing an interventionist
policy globally.
Pervin, Spiegel and Quandt suggest that US policies in Lebanon and
the Middle East were as much a pursuit for regional recognition as the
identification of the US as the primary international peacekeeper.27
Without directly contradicting this argument, Taylor carefully qualifies
this by stating that US-Lebanese relations were defined more by the
need for the stronger US military identity in the region than by any
commitment to peacekeeping and international law.28 Moreover, Hanf
and Stookey raise the question of whether the US in the Middle East
during the 1980s was in fact a broader part of the Cold War and of the
degree to which Soviet influence, at the international level, shaped the
Reagan Administration’s policy in Lebanon, a question which is funda-
mental to this book’s research narrative.29 To this, Velasco responds that
the Cold War provided the necessary momentum for Reagan’s foreign
policy ‘crusades’ because the US President himself was set on confronting
global communism.30 Similarly, Hanf’s research on the Lebanese Civil
War argues that any US or Soviet interference in Lebanon during the
1980s should be analysed under a broader Cold War framework, where
8 1 INTRODUCTION

superpower confrontation was indirectly played out through the Israeli-

PLO and Israeli-Syrian conflict.31
Stein argues that Reagan inherited an international context charac-
terised by the increasing Soviet-US tension and heightened awareness of
‘Third World’ countries as the frontier for a proxy conflict between the
two superpowers.32 Hallenbeck, Taylor and Nelson also argue that the US
pursuit of domination in the region is particularly important in the context
of the superpower dynamic by linking the US to a legacy of Western
imperialism and viewing Soviet influence as a product of a Tsarist legacy
of expansionism, both poised at the frontiers of the ‘Third World’.33
Soviet involvement in the Middle East is defined as ‘a special endeavour
to promote a Soviet-sponsored “anti-imperialist” front against the United
States and Israel.’34 Meanwhile, US ‘imperial’ policy aimed ‘to contain
Soviet expansionist moves by filling the power vacuum emerging from the
incipient withdrawal of Great Britain and France from the area’.35
Certainly, a historically Christian, pro-European ideology allowed the
US to align itself with nations and regimes that had recently abandoned
their French and British sponsors and Fieldhouse’s thesis maintains that
US interests in Lebanon evolved directly out of the power vacuum left
behind by the French.36
Westad demonstrates how Reagan’s active engagement with the ‘Third
World’ from 1981 onwards aimed to reduce Soviet influence in resource-
rich developing countries and also led to Washington’s push for market-
based economies in previously Marxist-inspired countries.37 While
Westad’s thesis on the Cold War is essential to the dialogue of superpower
relations in the Middle East, his perceptible silence on Lebanon implies
that he does not regard Reagan’s Cold War offensive as including the
Lebanese Civil War.38 Much of this is because, as Freedman also argues,
while the renewal of superpower tensions created a struggle for a greater
military identity, the Soviet Union was preoccupied with the Iran-Iraq and
Afghan Wars and therefore less inclined to enter the Lebanese conflict
directly.39 Stocker supports that the US had little intention of entering
Lebanon and that little US policy focussed on internal Lebanese issues
until the lead up of the Civil War. In fact, throughout the 1960s and
1970s, Lebanon was on the periphery of countries in the region in which
US policy was concerned. Stocker argues that it was the regional and Cold
War tensions that brought Lebanon, and consequently the US together.40
To this discussion, Contemporary or New Cold War historians in the
Middle East, such as Westad and Khalidi, argue that the Cold War ideology
 A COLD WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST? A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF REAGAN . . . 9

and its effects on foreign policy interventions should be examined with

caution. Restraint must be exercised regarding the application of a neocon-
servative view to any discussion of the Lebanon crisis, where there is a risk of
overstating the superpower dynamic’s role as the driving motivation for US
intervention there.41 It is important to recognise that, by the early 1980s,
the Soviet Union faced challenges associated with its international clients,
where control of and support for pro-Communist armed groups were
unsustainable, as the waning Soviet support for the PLO evidenced.42
While discussing the broad ideological links between Presidents or
Administrations can prove challenging, Reagan’s Administration has
often been recognised for its role in reviving and confronting global
moral dialogues.43 The Reagan Doctrine was a concept that illustrated a
distinct break from the non-interventionist policies that had, in many
ways, made President Carter appear politically impotent on the interna-
tional stage.44 Shultz deemed this policy reversal ‘the ecology of interna-
tional change’, since US policy was ultimately thrust into the act of
‘preventing war’ because ‘old diplomacy is not going to be sufficient to
meet the novel threats of world security’.45 Reagan renewed the neocon-
servative’s view of foreign policy in creating the US’ assertive role in
confronting the Soviet Union and providing the world with a quasi-
democratic revolution.46 However, as Layne notes,

the Reagan Doctrine failed to give Americans a convincing answer to the

crucial question of why the United States should become involved in
regional disputes that were, at best, only peripherally connected to its
national security.47

The existing historical narratives relating to the 1982 US intervention in

Lebanon, and more specifically the MNF, are often portrayed as merely a
component of the complex foreign interference that characterised the
Lebanese Civil War. Prominent research on the Lebanese Civil War,
such as that by Hanf, treats US intervention as a minor subtopic of the
conflict’s regional dynamics, depicting the MNF as an extension of Syria’s
and Israel’s regional occupation, which drew in the European and
American powers.48
However, several scholarly works on US intervention examine the
MNF as a policy vehicle in itself; these include Hallenbeck, Nelson,
Norton, Kemp and Thakur who largely maintain that the MNF in
Lebanon marked Reagan’s foreign policy programme’s complete failure.49
10 1 INTRODUCTION

The historical debates regarding the MNF are centred on three key ques-
tions. First, did the intervention in Lebanon represent a strategic policy
decision such that the MNF should be seen as securing broader US goals?
Second, was there an increasing variance between the US vision of peace-
making and those espoused by the UN that ultimately led the Reagan
Administration to consider itself above the international legal parameters?
Third, was the Cold War the key that led to US intervention in Lebanon
or are claims of US concerns over the Soviet Union overplayed?50
Hallenbeck argues that criticism of the MNF should focus on how US
military policy was applied rather than the force’s initial establishment itself.
He calls the US intervention a ‘thankless but right-minded undertaking’.51
Bell also maintains that the MNF was operationally ill-conceived, doomed to
failure from the beginning of its deployment. She argues that the MNF
merely ‘constituted a declaratory signal’.52 Korbani and Bell’s loosely guided
rational approach imply that the initial MNF deployment was undertaken
because the Reagan Administration had calculated that its potential net gains
would be overwhelmingly in the US favour.53 This argument proposes that
the Reagan Administration made an active, conscious decision to enter
Lebanon as a means of implementing wider regional or international goals.
Similarly, while Hanf fails to consider the MNF as a cogent military influ-
ence, he agrees that US involvement was fundamentally entwined in the
pursuit of other, even more substantial US policy objectives in the Middle
East, including Palestinian settlement.54 It is important therefore to chal-
lenge the view that US policy under the MNF was fundamentally aimed at
establishing stability and sovereignty in Lebanon, as the Administration
claimed.55
Thakur further maintains that, while the strategic benefit for the US in
entering Lebanon was minimal, the wider ramifications associated with the
US failure to have acted tangibly in the conflict could have threatened
Washington’s regional and international military credibility. He argues
that the UN’s failure to exert its peacekeeping powers in Lebanon, given
the continual failure of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), led
to US justifications for the MNF.56 Schou argues that the US should have
engaged with UNIFIL in its peacekeeping mission if it truly wished to
promote neutral, humanitarian mediation of the conflict rather than to
escalate it.57 Pfaltzgraff, Eichelberger and Ovinnikov attribute US refusal
to use UNIFIL to the fact that the US knew that the Soviet Union would
have preferred a UNIFIL mission rather than the US-led MNF.
Furthermore, the historians argue that because the US believed that the
 A COLD WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST? A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF REAGAN . . . 11

Soviet Union saw the MNF deployment as a vehicle for a US-led Soviet
containment policy, the Reagan Administration could use the MNF to
further threaten and exclude the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) from the region.58
Gabriel, however, asserts that UNIFIL’s seemingly soft approach
towards the PLO was both a ‘flagrant violation of UN regulations’ and a
‘failure of the UN forces to curtail PLO activity in the zone’.59 Even
though the Reagan Administration wished to avoid being perceived as
being unconditionally aligned with Israel in case Israeli actions threatened
US diplomacy with the neighbouring Arab states, the US State
Department ordered that the Palestinians should to be handled by the
Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) rather than by UNIFIL in order to reduce
Israeli protests over UNIFIL’s protection of the PLO in Southern
Lebanon. Baylouny also highlights the MNF’s relationship with the
PLO as an extension of US policy towards the Palestinians, given that
‘the PLO has long been a problem for US policy’.60 Gabriel accurately
concludes that that UNIFIL’s inability militarily to control either the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or the PLO meant that UN forces became
an ineffective buffer between both groups, ultimately leading Reagan to
deploy the MNF.61
Stoddard posits the opposite, specifically that the Reagan Administration
did not view the Arab-Israeli conflict as a threat or concern for American
interests in the Middle East as ‘it [the US] sees no crisis to manage’.62 Both
he and Sisco question whether the MNF was devised to prevent the
impending violence between Israel and Palestine, such as the Sabra and
Shatila massacre proved or, rather, if the establishment of the US mission
was ultimately an impulsive decision that illustrated the Administration’s
failure to comprehend the Lebanese crisis for what it was; namely a kaleido-
scope of internal sectarian violence and regional interference.63 Thakur
specifically regards US opportunism over the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
as fostering US influence in the region, with little concern for either Arab-
Israeli or Lebanese peace. He therefore sees the MNF as ‘the imposition of a
pax americana in the Middle East’.64
The existing scholarly research has focused on two areas. First, the
Lebanon crisis as a potential opportunity for the Reagan Administration
to implement wider foreign policy goals in the Middle East and second,
the role of the Soviet Union and the Arab-Israeli conflict as important
factors in the conflict’s regional and international dynamics. What the
existing literature so far has failed to provide is an examination of how
12 1 INTRODUCTION

the US regional approach failed to engage the internal Lebanese factions,

thus creating policy inefficiencies throughout the MNF deployment.
This book takes on an empirical study of executive US decision-making in
Lebanon from 1982 to 1984. It adopts an incremental rather than a neo-
institutional or exclusively rational approach to examine US policy in
Lebanon, which was characterised by significant policy discontinuity. It also
focuses on the role of personalities, particularly Reagan and Shultz and their
confrontational leadership style. As Aran and Alden note, the role played by
personalities in foreign policy construction provides an important context for
the specific policies themselves.65 As such, this research cautiously considers
Reagan’s key ideological and doctrinal discourses around Lebanon. This
book draws upon a wide range of primary sources, many of which were
only declassified between November 2010 and April 2014, including
National Security Council, Presidential and State Department diplomatic
cables. The US archival material is complemented by archival documents at
the UN and British national archives. The latter holds the European com-
munications between the other MNF partners: Britain, France and Italy.
In addition to this wide range of archival sources, memoirs of
Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Gemayel, Shultz, Haig, Weinberger and
former Lebanese Foreign Minister Salem have also been consulted.66 As
Egerton argues, the use of memoirs to construct political history should be
approached with caution, as the line between ‘historical truth and personal
apologia’ can become blurred, especially with regard to accounts of a
public failure during the author’s tenure or Administration, as is the case
with Reagan.67 Scalmer further argues that such autobiographies and
memoirs can lead to a more popular, ambitious and ‘interventionist’
flavour than the historical truth might have provided.68
The self-styled libertarian socialist, Noam Chomsky, made a speech in
Beirut in 2010 about US Foreign Policy in the Middle East. He stated:

Now when the United States vetoes a resolution, it’s a double veto. First of
all, it doesn’t happen, and secondly, it’s vetoed from history . . . That’s one of
the prerogatives of an imperial power. You can control history as long as you
have a submissive intellectual class, which the West does have.

Extraordinarily, Chomsky’s critique of US decision-making in the Middle

East failed to even make a passing mention of the MNF or US intervention
in Lebanon. Seemingly this statement holds true if even the greatest critics
of US policy has fallen victim to forgetting the MNF’s impact in Lebanon.
 NOTES 13

Could this mean that one of the Reagan Administration’s most significant
foreign policy blunders has also been vetoed from Chomsky’s history?
Chomsky continued:

You see it every day in the newspapers. The United States is an honest
broker and neutral arbiter trying to bring together two sides which are
irrational and violent. They won’t agree and the United States is trying to
settle the conflict between them.

Indeed, if the Lebanon intervention has taught the world anything, it is

that this image must be created with caution. The US entered a highly
volatile conflict and in its ambiguity and naivety the intervention exacer-
bated the instability. If Reagan or Shultz had foreseen the negative impact
that the intervention would have on the Administration and Lebanon
would it have risked US domestic and Congressional disapproval as it did?
Furthermore, this research has significant implications for US for-
eign policy in the Middle East beyond merely the Reagan
Administration. The lessons not learned by the key decision-makers in
the Reagan Administration, were unfortunately followed by subsequent
Administrations who blurred the lines of intervention, peacekeeping
and the use of military force. Even though the MNF conclusively failed
in its initial peacekeeping objectives in Lebanon, it succeeded in inau-
gurating the US pre-emptive and military-led peacemaking vehicle that
would be seen throughout the next three decades, in some form or
another, both in the Middle East and worldwide. From President Bill
Clinton’s US-led NATO bombings in the Balkans, President George W
Bush’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMD) intervention in Iraq
and Afghanistan and President Barrack Obama’s military strikes in
Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. As though forecasting the movement
away from United Nations’ solutions and towards US-led peacemaking
globally, this book illustrates how Reagan and Shultz’s 1980s military
peacekeeping blueprints left a resounding legacy.

NOTES
1. For reasons of specificity, the MNF will be split into two distinct bodies,
namely MNFI, from 29 August to 10 September 1982 and MNFII from 20
September 1982 to 17 February 1984.
14 1 INTRODUCTION

2. President Reagan [Message to US Marine Forces Participating in the

Multinational Force in Beirut, Lebanon], 25 August 1982, Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library (hereafter RRPL), p.1.
3. ibid.
4. [Address to the Nation Announcing the Formation of the New
Multinational Force in Lebanon], 20 September 1982, RRPL, p.1.
5. ‘5800 “soldats de la paix”’, Le Monde, 25 October 1983, p.1.
6. [Statement on the Situation in Lebanon], 6 February 1984, http://www.
reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/20684c.htm,
7. Ralph Hallenbeck, ‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy,’
(New York: Praeger, 1991), pp.123–134, xi.
8. Bernard Gwertzman, ‘Washington Frustration’, New York Times (hereafter
NYT), 17 February 1984, p.1.
9. Ramesh Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping, UN Authority and US
Power’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 12, 1987, pp.461–492;
Ann Marie Baylouny, ‘US Foreign Policy in Lebanon’, in Robert Looney,
ed., Handbook on U.S. Middle East Relations, (London: Routledge, 2009),
pp.310–323, 315; Theodor Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon:
Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation’, pp.174–175; Agnes Korbani, ‘U.
S. Intervention in Lebanon, 1958 and 1982: Presidential Decisionmaking’,
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991), p.94 & Ramesh Thakur,
‘International Peacekeeping in Lebanon: United Nations Authority and
Multinational Force’, (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1987).
10. James Nathan & James Oliver, ‘United States Foreign Policy and World
Order’, (Glenview: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1989), p.469.
11. Lou Cannon, ‘President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime’, (New York:
Public Affairs, 2000), p.354.
12. Theodor Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and
Rise of a Nation’, (London: Centre for Lebanese Studies, Tauris & Co,
1993), pp.551–566.
13. Thomas Brewer, ‘American Foreign Policy: A Contemporary Introduction’,
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1980), pp.27–46.
14. Rainey, Ronquillo & Avellaneda, ‘Decision Making in Public Organisation’,
in Paul Nutt & David Wilson, eds., Handbook of Decision Making
(Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), pp.361–365.
15. Morton Halperin & Priscilla Clapp, ‘Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign
Policy’, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006), pp.243–300;
Jerel Rosati, ‘Developing a Systematic Decision-Making Framework:
Bureaucratic Politics in Perspective’, World Politics’ Vol. 33, No. 2, 1981,
pp.234–252 & Lauren Holland, ‘The U.S. Decision to Launch Operation
Desert Storm: A Bureaucratic Politics Analysis’, Armed Forces & Society,
Vol. 25, Winter 1999, pp.219–242.
 NOTES 15

16. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, ‘Prospect Theory: An Analysis of

Decision Under Risk’, Econometrica, Vol. 47, No. 2, 1979, pp.263–291.
17. Patrick Haney, ‘Organising for Foreign Policy Crises: Presidents, Advisers,
and the Management of Decision Making’, (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1980).
18. Robert Stookey, ‘The United States’, in Edward Haley & Lewis Snider,
eds., Lebanon in Crisis: Participants and Issues (New York: Syracuse
University Press, 1979).
19. Michael Hudson, ‘The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in
Lebanon’, (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985), Kamal Salibi, ‘A
house of Many Mansions- the History of Lebanon Reconsidered’, (London:
I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1993); Theodor Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime
Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation’; Marius Deeb, ‘The
Lebanese Civil War’, (New York: Praeger, 1980); Wade Goria,
‘Sovereignty and Leadership in Lebanon 1943–1976’, (London: Ithaca
Press, 1985); Tabitha Petran, ‘The Struggle over Lebanon’, (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1987); B.J. Odeh, ‘Lebanon: Dynamics of Conflict’,
(London: Zed Books, 1985); Samir Kassir, ‘La guerre du Liban: De la
dissension nationale au conflit regional, 1975–1982’ (Beirut: CERMOC,
1994) and Ahmad Beydoun, ‘Le Liban: Itineraires dans une guerre incivile’,
(Beirut: Cermoc, 1993).
20. Naseer Aruri, ‘U.S. Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict,’ in ‘The United
States and the Middle East: A Search for New Perspectives, ed. Hooshang
Amirahmadi (Albany: University of New York Press, 1993), pp.89–124.
21. Dominic Sachsenmaier, ‘Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories
and Approaches in a Connected World’, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), pp.11–109; Chris Alden & Amnon Aran,
‘Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches’, (Hoboken: Taylor and
Francis, 2011), pp.1–30; Mary Fulbrook, ‘Historical Theory’, (London:
Routledge, 2002), pp.12–50; Jonathan Gorman, ‘Historical Judgment’,
(Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), pp.17–66; M.C.
Lemon, ‘The Discipline of History and the History of Thought’,
(London: Routledge, 1995), pp.134–261; Marcus Cunliffe, ‘American
History’ in Martin Ballard, eds., ‘New Movements in the Study and
Teaching of History, (London: Temple Smith, 1970), pp.116–133; Meera
Nanda, ‘Against Social De(con)struction of Science: Cautionary Tales from
the Third World’ in Ellen Wood & John Foster, eds., ‘In Defense of
History’, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997), pp.74–97; Matthew
Jacobs, ‘Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign
Policy, 1918–1967’, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2011); William Lucey, ‘History: Methods and Interpretation’, (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1984), pp.18–44; Burton Sapin, ‘The Making of
16 1 INTRODUCTION

United States Foreign Policy’, (Washington, DC: The Brookings

Institution: 1966), pp.15–33 & Ruland, Hanf & Manke, eds., ‘U.S.
Foreign Policy Toward the Third World: A Post-Cold War Assessment’,
(London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006).
22. Chris Alden & Amnon Aran, ‘Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches’,
(Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2011), pp.62–76; James Scott, ‘Deciding to
Intervene: the Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy’, (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1996), pp.6–13 & Paul Peterson, ‘The President,
the Congress, and the Making of Foreign Policy’, (London: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1994), pp.4–6.
23. John Manley, ‘The Rise of Congress in Foreign Policy’, The ANNALS of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science (hereafter AAPSS),
Vol. 397, 1971, pp.60–70 & Lindsay, J.M, Sayrs, L.W. & Steger, W.P.,
‘The Determinants of Presidential Foreign Policy Choice’, American Politics
Research, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1992, pp.3–25.
24. Coral Bell, ‘The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s’,
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p.88.
25. ibid.
26. George Herring, ‘American and Vietnam: The Unending War’, Foreign
Affairs, December 1991, pp.104–119.
27. David Pervin & Steven Spiegel, eds., ‘Practical Peacemaking in the Middle
East: Arms Control and Regional Security’, (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis,
1995) pp.21–84, 207–246; William Quandt, ed., ‘The Middle East: Ten
Years After Camp David’, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution: 1988),
pp.357–236.
28. Alan Taylor, ‘The Superpowers and the Middle East’, (New York: Syracuse
University Press, 1991). pp.33–60.
29. Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a
Nation’, pp.174–176; Robert Dallek, ‘Ronald Reagan: The Politics of
Symbolism’, (London: Harvard Press, 1984), pp.129–155 & Robert
Stookey, ‘The United States’, in Edward Haley & Lewis Snider, eds.,
Lebanon in Crisis: Participants and Issues (New York: Syracuse University
Press, 1979).
30. Jesus Velasco, ‘Neoconservatives in U.S. Foreign Policy Under Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush’, (John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore,
2010), pp.38–111.
31. Hanf, pp.174–175.
32. Janice Stein, ‘Flawed Strategies and Missed Signals’ in David Lesch, ‘The
Middle East and the United States – A Historical and Political
Reassessment’, Fourth Edition, (Colorado: Westview Press, 2007) and
Ruland, Hanf & Manke, eds., ‘U.S. Foreign Policy Toward the Third
World: A Post-Cold War Assessment’, (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006).
 NOTES 17

33. Taylor, ‘The Superpowers and the Middle East’, pp.4–22; Hallenbeck,
‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy, pp.67–80 &
Richard Nelson, ‘The Multinational Force in Beirut’, in Anthony
McDermott and Kjell Skjelsbaek, The Multinational Force in Beirut 1982–
1984 (Miami: Florida International University Press: 1991), pp.98–100.
34. Taylor, ‘The Superpowers and the Middle East’, p.137.
35. ibid. p.25.
36. David Fieldhouse, ‘Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914–1958’,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) pp.304–336.
37. Odd Arne Westad, ‘The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and
the Making of Our Time’, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
pp.331–363.
38. ibid. pp.348–353.
39. Robert Freedman, ‘Patterns of Soviet Policy Toward the Middle East’,
AAPSS, Vol. 482, 1985, pp.40–64
40. James Stocker, ‘Spheres of Intervention: US Foreign Policy and the Collapse
of Lebanon, 1967–1976’, (New York: Cornell University Press, 2016),
pp.1–5.
41. Campbell, ‘The Soviet Union and the United States in The Middle East’,
AAPSS, Vol. 401, 1972, pp.126–135.
42. Westad, ‘The Global Cold War’, pp.331–363 & Rashid Khalidi, ‘Sowing
Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East’,
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2009), pp.145–150.
43. Ronnie Duger, ‘On Reagan: The Man & His Presidency’, (New York:
McGraw Book Company, 1983), pp.350–392; Condoleezza Rice,
‘U.S.- Soviet Relations’, in Larry Berman, ed., Looking Back on the
Reagan Presidency (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1990), pp.71–89;
Dallek, ‘Ronald Reagan’, pp.30–62; Theodore Lowi, ‘Ronald Reagan –
Revolutionary?’, in Salamon & Lund, eds., The Reagan Presidency and
the Governing of America (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute,
1984), pp.29–56; John White, ‘The New Politics of Old Values’,
(London: University Press of New England, 1988), pp.7–22;
44. Christopher Layne, ‘Requiem for the Reagan Doctrine’, in David Boaz,
ed., Assessing the Reagan Years (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1988),
p.96.
45. George Shultz, ‘The Ecology of International Change’ in Greg Schmergel,
ed., US Foreign Policy in the 1990s, (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp.3–14.
46. Jesus Velasco, ‘Neoconservatives in U.S. Foreign Policy Under Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush’, (John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore,
2010), pp.38–111.
47. Christopher Layne, ‘Requiem for the Reagan Doctrine’, p.103.
48. Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon’, pp.174–175.
18 1 INTRODUCTION

49. Hallenbeck, ‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy;

Nelson, ‘The Multinational Force in Beirut’; Norton, ‘The Demise of the
MNF’; Kemp, ‘The American Peacekeeping Role in Lebanon’, in Anthony
McDermott and Kjell Skjelsbaek, The Multinational Force in Beirut, 1982–
1984 (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991) & Ramesh
Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping in Lebanon: United Nations
Authority and Multinational Force’, (Boulder and London: Westview
Press, 1987).
50. Condoleezza Rice, ‘U.S.- Soviet Relations’ & Robert Leiber, ‘The Middle
East’, in Berman, Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency, pp.50–70, 71–92.
51. This could owe, in part, to Hallenbeck’s Role as US Chief of Current
Operations in the Directorate of Operations and Plans between 1983–1984.
52. Bell, ‘The Reagan Paradox’, p.88.
53. Agnes Korbani, ‘U.S. Intervention in Lebanon, 1958 and 1982’, (New
York: Praeger Publishers, 1991), p.94.
54. Hanf, ‘Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon’, pp.174–175, 264–274.
55. Hallenbeck, ‘Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy’,
pp.15–18.
56. Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping, UN Authority and US Power’,
pp.461–492.
57. Arlid Schou, ‘The Breakdown of Conflict Management in Lebanon’,
Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1989, p.201.
58. Eichelberger, ‘The Role the United Nations in the East-West Dispute’,
AAPSS, Vol. 336, 1961, pp.106–113; Richard Ovinnikov, ‘The USSR
Position on Disarmament in the United Nations’, AAPSS, Vol. 414,
1974, pp.51–63 & Robert Pfaltzgraff, ‘The Superpower Relationship and
U.S. National Security Policy in the 1980s’, AAPSS, Vol. 457, 1981,
pp.186–197.
59. Richard Gabriel, ‘Operation Peace for Galilee: The Israeli PLO War in
Lebanon’, (USA: Collins Publishers, 1984), p.50.
60. Baylouny, ‘US Foreign Policy in Lebanon’, pp.310–323.
61. Gabriel, ‘Operation Peace for Galilee’, pp.45–55.
62. Philip Stoddard, ‘U.S. Policy and the Arab Israeli Conflict: Observations on
the current Scene’, AAPSS, Vol. 482, 1985, pp.19–39.
63. ibid & Joseph Sisco, ‘The United States and the Arab-Israeli Dispute’,
AAPSS, Vol. 384, 1969, pp.66–72.
64. Thakur, ‘International Peacekeeping’, p.472.
65. Alden & Aran, ‘Foreign Policy Analysis’, pp.23–25.
66. Ronald Reagan, ‘The Reagan Diaries’, (USA: Harper Collins, 2007); Amine
Gemayel, ‘L’Offense et le Pardon’, (Paris: Gallimard et Lieu Commun,
1988); Caspar Weinberger, ‘Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the
Pentagon’, (New York: Warner Communications, 1990); Alexander Haig,
 NOTES 19

‘Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy’, (London: Weidenfeld and

Nicolson, 1984); George Shultz, ‘Triumph and Turmoil: My Years as
Secretary of State’, (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1993) & Elie
Salem, ‘Violence and Diplomacy in Lebanon, The Troubled Years 1982–
1988’ (London: Tauris, 1995).
67. George Egerton, ‘The Politics of Memory: Form and Function in the
History of Political Memoir from Antiquity to Modernity’, in George
Egerton, ed., Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (London:
Frank Cass & Co Ltd, 1994), pp.3–6.
68. Sean Scalmer, ‘The Rise of the Insider: Memoirs and Diaries in Recent
Australian Political History’, Australian Journal of Politics and History,
Vol. 56, No. 1, 2010, pp.82–104.
Another random document with
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 CHAPTER VI
THROUGH THE JUNGLE

A pang like the stab of a knife went through Bomba.

“What mean you, Pipina?” he cried. “Speak. Speak fast.”
“We stand up from hole,” the squaw explained. “We find us far in the
jungle away from the headhunters of Nascanora. Yet Casson and
Pipina still afraid.”
“You hide?” asked Bomba.
The old woman nodded, looking about her fearfully.
“We go far, very far, into the jungle,” she said. “We hide behind big
rock. From there we see light from fire. Nascanora he think we are in
hut. He think Casson and Pipina burn like tapir meat on the end of
spit. But Pipina too smart for him. Pipina she fool the great chief
Nascanora.”
Her words ended in a chuckle. There was something so ghastly in
mirth at a scene that had so many elements of tragedy that Bomba
felt the hair rise on his scalp, and he spoke sharply to Pipina.
“You have not told Bomba what happened to Casson. Do not laugh
and say foolish words. Speak wise words and few words. Tell Bomba
of Casson.”
“Ayah!” wailed the squaw. “I look to see the clearing, the cabin. I look
hard. I look long. Pipina’s eyes were turned from Casson. Then I turn
and see him. Then Pipina look again at cabin only as long as for a
monkey to swing from tree to tree. Yet when Pipina turn again—
Casson is gone.”
“Gone!”
Bomba sprang wildly to his feet and looked about him.
“You do not know what way he went?” he asked.
“No, Pipina does not know,” came sadly. “He was gone, and Pipina
did not dare go from behind the rock for fear she be caught by the
bucks of Nascanora.”
“But why should Casson wander off?” asked Bomba, in
bewilderment. “He was safer behind the rock in the company of
Pipina.”
The old woman sighed and touched her forehead again with her
scrawny finger.
“He not right here,” she reminded him. “He not know what he do.
Maybe he go to find Bomba.”
“He cannot find his way anywhere,” declared Bomba sadly. “He will
be like a child in the jungle. He will be at the mercy of the big cats, of
the anacondas, of the other creeping things that watch and spring
upon their prey. Casson might as well have stayed in the hut of fire,
for his death in the jungle is as sure.”
Pipina wrung her hands and continued the rocking motion of her
body.
“He is mad,” she chanted in a singsong voice. “There is a strange
power about him that will keep off evil. The gods will watch over him.
The serpent will not strike him, the jaguar will not spring upon him.
For they know that he is mad and fear him.”
Though Bomba shook his head, the words of Pipina brought a little
comfort to his heart. He knew that the savage beasts of the jungle,
like the savage men of the jungle, had fear of all that was not sane
and shunned it. Still, poor Cody Casson’s feebleness of mind
seemed but a doubtful protection, and Bomba’s heart misgave him.
“When Pipina found that Casson was gone what did she do then?”
he asked, turning to his companion.
“Pipina wait till fire go out and she think Indians go away,” was the
reply. “Then she creep back toward the cabin. She hope Bomba
come back and help her find Casson. Then the thorns catch Pipina
and she stop. She call. Bomba come.”
“Yes, Bomba came—too late,” said the lad sorrowfully. “My heart is
heavy for Casson. Except Pipina, Bomba has no other friend.”
“There is the good chief, Hondura,” suggested Pipina. “He will help
Bomba.”
“Yes, he will help,” assented Bomba wearily. “Bomba will take Pipina
to him where she may rest in the maloca of the good chief. There
she will be safe from the headhunters of Nascanora. Then Bomba
will find Casson.”
But though Bomba spoke with courage, grief possessed him. In his
heart he feared that certain death awaited the ill and feeble Casson
in the jungle.
With a sigh, Bomba turned to Pipina and held out his hand to her.
“Come,” he said. “Bomba and Pipina will go to the camp of Hondura.
It is not safe to stay here longer.”
The old woman shivered and protested.
“It is dark,” she complained. “Wait till the sun rises in the sky and we
shall go more quickly to the camp of the good chief Hondura.”
“In this place there is danger,” returned Bomba, in a low voice,
looking uneasily about him. “Even now the scouts of Nascanora may
have returned to search the ashes of the cabin to make sure that
Casson and Pipina are dead. Besides, they know that Bomba lives,
and they will not sleep well at night until they know that he, too, is
dead. Give Bomba your hand, Pipina. We must go.”
Pipina obeyed without further protest. But she was trembling with
age and the damp chill of the jungle night, and Bomba saw that their
progress to the camp of Hondura and his people must be slow.
“Bomba will carry Pipina when the road is too rough,” promised the
lad. “But by the time the sun rises in the sky we must reach the
maloca of Hondura or we are lost.”
The old woman hobbled on beside him, whimpering.
“Bomba fears nothing, but Pipina is afraid,” she wailed. “There are
evil spirits abroad in the night. They will carry us off and bury us in
the ygapo or feed us to the hungry jaguars.”
“That would be better than to have the hands of Nascanora and his
bucks fall upon us,” replied Bomba grimly. “Besides, Pipina speaks
words that are foolish. There are no evil spirits in the darkness. The
night is kind, for it hides our going from our enemies.”
Bomba spoke in a very low tone, scarcely above a whisper. But
Pipina interrupted him, holding up her hand.
“Listen!” she said. “What was that?”
For answer Bomba seized her by the shoulders and dragged her
down beside him. Surrounded by the thick brush, they were well
concealed from any one who did not pass too close. There was
always a chance of being stumbled upon. But in that event Bomba’s
knife would flash with the quickness of the rattlesnake’s spring, and
its sting would be quite as deadly.
Bomba listened, muscles tensed, every sense alert. Neither he nor
Pipina had been mistaken. They had heard a sound, the sharp
crackling of a twig beneath a stealthy foot.
They heard no more for several seconds. Then, not twenty feet from
them, the brushwood stirred, and from it they saw two figures
emerge and stand faintly outlined against the darker shadows of the
jungle.
Bomba’s first thought was that perhaps the sound he heard had
been caused by Casson. His heart leaped with hope and gladness.
But that feeling was quickly dispelled when he recognized two of the
headhunters of Nascanora.
They stood there conversing in a dialect which Bomba readily
understood, as he did most other languages of the region.
“They are dead,” said one of them. “The fire has made ashes of their
bones. The white witch doctor will no longer lay his spells on the
people of the Giant Cataract.”
Bomba rejoiced. They had not then found Casson.
“It is good,” returned the other. “The squaws and the old men of the
tribe will be glad when we tell them that the man who made bad
magic is dead.”
“But the boy still lives,” returned the other. “Nascanora will not sleep
well until he has his head upon his wigwam. Already this night the
boy has beaten Toluro in fight. He stamped his head into the mud.
And his arrows have carried death on their points.”
“The demons help him,” the other replied. “They come from the fire
and strike down our men. He has the same magic as the old man
with white hair. He is wiser and stronger than our medicine men.”
A few more words, and the Indians passed on, their going scarcely
disturbing a leaf or a twig.
“They pass like the shadows of all things evil,” murmured Bomba to
himself, as he cautiously rose again to his feet and prepared to
resume his journey. “Come, Pipina.”
They made fairly good progress, considering Pipina’s age and
weakness. There was no pausing to take their bearings, for Bomba
was familiar with the way that led to Hondura’s village.
When the strength of the old squaw failed and she could go no
farther, Bomba picked her up in his strong young arms and carried
her with scarcely a lessening of his stride.
After a while they heard the sound of rushing water.
Bomba lowered Pipina to the ground and stood listening.
“The storm has filled the ygapo,” he murmured. “It will be hard
crossing. Listen, Pipina.”
“I hear,” wailed the squaw. “Bomba cannot ford the ygapo. He must
swim, and that will be hard with an old woman on his back. Pipina
cannot swim.”
“There will be caymans in the ygapo,” muttered Bomba thoughtfully.
“Bomba cannot swim with Pipina and fight at the same time. Yet we
must cross the ygapo if we are to be in the camp of the good chief
before the sun comes up.”
“Pipina cannot cross,” whimpered the old woman. “She will be killed
and Bomba too will be killed. Wait here till the darkness goes, and
we will cross by the light of the sun. Bomba can make a raft and we
will go on that.”
“Our enemies are about us,” returned Bomba, as he bent a frowning
look upon the surrounding forest. “If we wait, they will find us and
drag us to the village of Nascanora. We cannot wait. We must go.”
“The river roars,” wailed the squaw, wringing her hands. “It waits for
Bomba and Pipina like a jaguar hungry for its meat. It is death to
cross.”
“A little way from here there is a log across the water,” said Bomba.
“What better bridge do Bomba and Pipina want?”
“The log is slippery,” moaned Pipina. “Bomba must go on. His feet
are sure. But he cannot carry Pipina. He will fall. Bomba go alone.
Leave Pipina behind.”
Ignoring the woman’s protests, Bomba caught her in his arms and
bore her swiftly along the banks of the stream.
He came to the log that stretched from bank to bank of the ygapo, or
swamp. At this point it had narrowed to the proportions of a
moderately wide gully. Usually there was only a muddy ooze at its
bottom.
But now the tropical rains had filled the gully, and a raging torrent
roared between the banks.
Bomba’s bridge would have been but a poor one at the best of times
—a tree trunk cut down close to the bank in such a way as to fall
across the gulch.
Even in the light of day, to cross its moss-grown, treacherous surface
without slipping was no easy matter. Yet Bomba had done it again
and again, for he was as lithe and sure-footed as a mountain goat.
But this was a different matter, and Bomba was well aware of the
danger that he faced. The dashing spray had made the log almost as
slippery as glass. The darkness added to the peril. With Pipina in his
arms it would be difficult to retain his balance. One slip and the two
might go whirling into that seething torrent to a fate that the boy
scarcely dared to think about.
Still the jungle lad did not hesitate. In front was the torrent, behind
him the headhunters. He chose what he regarded as the lesser of
the two evils, relying upon his strength and his sureness of foot to
carry him and his burden to the opposite side.
He shut his ears to the menacing roar of the waters. He had defied
the fury of torrents before. He would defy it again.
Resolutely Bomba set foot upon the log.
 CHAPTER VII
A PERILOUS CROSSING

Beneath him the waters roared and thundered. Pipina whimpered

and besought her gods, but the ears of Bomba were deaf to her
cries.
Underfoot the trunk was like glass. The slightest misstep might mean
disaster. But Bomba advanced steadily, scarcely troubled by the light
weight of the squaw. He was so accustomed to the dark that he
hardly needed the faint rays of moonlight that filtered through the
trees to tell him where to place his feet.
He was half-way across. Now he was more than half. Before him
loomed the dense undergrowth of the farther bank. Suddenly his foot
slipped!
For one horrible moment Bomba teetered over eternity.
Pipina sent up a shrill cry, for she expected that moment to be her
last.
By a marvelous exercise of muscular control, Bomba balanced
himself and retained his foothold upon the log with one foot while he
drew up the other and gradually regained his equilibrium.
But Pipina, in panic, was now squirming about in his arms and
disarranging his calculations. He measured the distance still to be
traversed, staked his all on one swift run, sped across the
treacherous log, and with one last leap reached the farther shore in
safety.
A great joy was singing in his heart as he set Pipina on her feet.
“The gods are with us, Pipina!” he exulted. “Where are your bad
spirits now? Tell Bomba that!”
“We have not yet reached the maloca of Hondura,” the old squaw
reminded him, holding tenaciously to her superstition. “It is not well
to rejoice too soon. We may yet find evil spirits hiding, waiting for us
behind the trees.”
But Bomba laughed such fears to scorn. He was buoyant with
confidence. Fate had been kind to him thus far that night, fate and
his own quick brain and strong arms.
His knowledge of the savages and their ways told him that he and
Pipina had passed through the ring of the headhunters. Moreover,
the maloca of Hondura was now only two hours’ journey away and
through a less tangled part of the jungle.
True, there was not a moment that did not hold possible peril for
them. A boa constrictor might dart from a tree branch and seek to
encircle them in its folds. The roar of a jaguar might prelude its
spring. Every thicket might harbor a bringer of death.
But evil as they were, they were better understood and more easily
dealt with than those human enemies, the men who carried at their
belts the heads of their victims.
Pipina declared now that she was strong enough to walk, and they
made rapid progress through the jungle, and as the first faint heralds
of the dawn appeared in the eastern sky they came within sight of
the maloca, or village, of Hondura, chief of the Araos tribe, the
strongest in that section of the jungle.
When Bomba and his companion reached the outskirts of the native
village they found the inhabitants already astir. The wanderers were
challenged by scouts, for since the advent of the headhunters a strict
watch was kept day and night. But the jungle lad was well known
and liked by the members of the tribe. His popularity with them was
only second to that of the chief himself, for only a few months before,
Bomba had rendered the tribe a service that made him forever
secure in their affections.
So Bomba and Pipina were greeted with every manifestation of
delight by the sentries and brought in triumph into the presence of
the chief.
The little Pirah, the greatly loved daughter of the chief, was with her
father, coaxing and cajoling him as usual for some childish privilege.
She gave a squeal of rapture as she saw Bomba and ran to him,
flinging her arms about his neck.
“Bomba has come back to us!” she cried, in delight. “Bomba will stay.
That make Pirah glad. Pirah very happy.”
Hondura had been watching the meeting with a smile upon his
wizened face. Now he came forward, and his greeting, though not so
demonstrative, was quite as cordial.
“It is good that Bomba is here,” he said. “Bomba has not come for
many moons. Hondura is glad. He will make a feast for Bomba and
all the tribe will rejoice.”
“Hondura has a good heart,” returned the lad. “He speaks good
words and his tongue is not forked. Bomba has come to ask
Hondura to help him. He wants to leave Pipina with him where she
will be safe while he goes on a journey that may take him many
moons.”
“Pipina is welcome in the maloca of Hondura,” replied the chief, as
he turned a kindly look on the old woman, who bowed her head and
stood in meek humility before him. “Pipina can stay with the women
because she is a friend of Bomba, who is a good friend to the tribe of
Hondura.”
The chief motioned them to seat themselves upon the cushions of
rushes within his tepee, and presently food was brought to them
which they devoured eagerly, for they had not eaten since noon of
the day before.
While they ate, Hondura questioned them further, while Pirah sat
close to the jungle lad, every now and then reaching out a timid little
hand to touch him.
“Where is the good white man, Casson?” asked Hondura.
Bomba shook his head sorrowfully.
“Casson has gone away,” he replied. “He has wandered into the
jungle. The headhunters came last night and burned the cabin of
Pipina. Bomba was not there. But when he came he found Pipina
hiding. She did not know where Casson had gone.”
Fire flashed in Hondura’s eyes.
“May the curse of the gods rest on Nascanora,” he cried. “Bomba
should have killed him the night he had him at his mercy.”
The reference was to a happening that had taken place near the
Giant Cataract on a night that Bomba had met Nascanora in the
midst of a perilous and horrifying scene. As the chief had blocked his
path Bomba had sunk the iron hilt of his machete into Nascanora’s
face, knocking him senseless. Hondura had urged then that Bomba
slay Nascanora, but the boy had refused to kill an enemy who could
not fight.
“The point of your knife should have bit into his heart,” went on
Hondura. “Then he would have troubled you no more. Now he hates
you more than before and has sworn to have vengeance. His nose is
crushed, and the squaws laugh at him behind his back, though they
do not dare to smile where he can see them. He would die happy if
he could make Bomba die first.”
Bomba laughed.
“He has yet to catch Bomba,” he replied. “And if he does catch him,
he may wish that he had rather laid his hand upon a cooanaradi. I do
not fear Nascanora. But I fear for Casson.”
“Hondura is sorry that the good old white man has gone,” said the
chief gravely. “Hondura like Casson. All the Araos like him. Wish him
good.”
“The good spirits will be with him in the jungle,” put in little Pirah.
“They will bring him safely to Bomba again or to one of the bucks of
my father.”
Hondura smiled indulgently upon the child and put a hand upon the
dark hair.
“Pirah speaks well,” he remarked. “May the good spirits be with
Casson during his journeyings in the jungle.”
Bomba thanked them both from his heart and addressed himself to
the chief.
“If the good chief meets the white man, Casson, will he bring him to
his maloca and keep him safe until Bomba comes back?” he asked.
“That Hondura will do,” promised the chief gravely.
For a few moments there was silence, while each stared thoughtfully
into the jungle. Then Hondura asked:
“Where does Bomba go now that he speaks of leaving the maloca of
Hondura?”
“I shall not leave yet, Hondura,” he replied. “First, I shall search for
Casson. I will beat every thicket of the jungle until I find him or feel
sure that the gods have taken him. Only after that is done will Bomba
set out on a long journey.”
“The words are dark yet,” replied the chief. “Where is Bomba going?”
“Bomba still seeks his parents,” returned the lad. “He wants to know
about his father and his mother. Even the jaguar’s cubs know their
father and mother. Bomba does not know. His heart will be heavy till
he does know. He has tried to learn the truth for many moons. He
has gone to the land of the Giant Cataract. He has traveled to the
Moving Mountain. He has gone to the snake island of Sobrinini. He
has journeyed many miles and met many dangers, and he does not
yet know the truth.”
“Where does Bomba go now to find the truth?” asked the chief, his
eyes dwelling thoughtfully on the lad.
“I go to seek Japazy, the half-breed,” replied Bomba. “Japazy may
tell Bomba what he wishes to know. Jojasta is gone. Sobrinini is
gone. Casson is gone. Japazy is the one hope of Bomba. If Japazy
is dead—”
He did not finish the sentence, but with a shrug of his shoulder
stared gloomily before him.
There was an interval of silence, and when the chief spoke again it
was in a low and solemn tone.
“Where is it,” he asked, “that Bomba would seek for Japazy, the half-
breed?”
Bomba hesitated for a moment, then spoke:
“I go to a spot where it is said I may find Japazy. I go to Jaguar
Island.”
The stoic calm of the Indian vanished. A look of horror sprang into
his eyes.
 CHAPTER VIII
THE WARNING

The chief of the Araos leaned toward Bomba and spoke in a voice
charged with intensity:
“Hondura is a friend of Bomba. Hondura speaks wise words. If
Bomba is wise, he will stay in the maloca of Hondura and not go to
the island of the big cats.”
Bomba looked puzzled.
“Why does Hondura tell this to Bomba?” he queried.
“Because Hondura is friend of Bomba,” replied the chief gravely. “He
would not see Bomba put his head within the jaws of death.”
“Is it because it is called Jaguar Island?” persisted the lad. “Is it the
big cats Hondura fears?”
The Indian shook his head.
“The danger Hondura fears for Bomba,” he answered impressively,
“is not of this world. It is of the world beyond. Be warned in time,
Bomba. Hondura has spoken.”
Although Bomba had been taught by Casson to laugh at the
superstitions of the natives, he had lived his life too far from
civilization not to share to some extent their primitive fear of the
supernatural.
The words of Hondura sent a strange chill through him. What did the
Indian mean?
“Of what danger speak you, Hondura?” he asked in an awed voice.
“Tell Bomba, so that he may know the truth.”
“Once a great many moons ago,” began Hondura, “there was above
the island of the great cats a big, strange city.”
The eyes of Bomba glistened.
“Tell me of it!” he cried.
“Those that knew of it said it was a city of devils, though its beauty
was that of the sun.”
“What made its beauty like the sun?” was Bomba’s eager query.
“The towers,” replied Hondura, “were of gold and reached upward
like trees to the sky. When men looked upon them long they had to
cover their eyes with their hands. Else they would have gone blind.”
“I wish that the eyes of Bomba might have seen it, Hondura!”
exclaimed the lad. He thought longingly of those faraway cities
described to him by the boy named Frank, the white boy, son of the
woman with the golden hair, who had once kissed Bomba as though
he had been her son. Perhaps this city with towers of gold was like
those others. So he looked eagerly, yearningly, at the wrinkled face
of the grizzled chieftain who spoke with such a calm air of
assurance.
“It is many moons since the eyes of men have rested upon that city,”
returned the Indian sternly, seeming by his manner to rebuke the
boy’s enthusiasm.
Bomba was abashed, but asked with undiminished curiosity:
“What then became of the city of gold, Hondura? Tell Bomba so that
he may know the truth. His heart is thirsty like that of the tapir that
bends its head toward the cool water.”
“The city sank into the earth,” returned Hondura. “Slowly the mud of
the swamp crept up over it and the towers of gold were covered so
that they no more made blind the eyes of men.”
The chief seemed to sink into a reverie after this announcement, and
Bomba ventured to remind him of his presence by asking another
question.
“The city is gone. Where then is the danger to Bomba, O good and
wise chief?”
Hondura roused himself from his abstraction and stared at Bomba
almost as though he were looking through him to something sinister
that lay beyond.
“It is true that the city is gone. But strange ghosts arise from it, spirits
that harm.”
The little Pirah cried out sharply, and Pipina started a long eerie wail
that chilled Bomba to the marrow of his bones.
“The evil spirits walk abroad at night,” the chief continued, “and woe
is the portion of those who meet them. For they carry with them pain
and pestilence and death. Of those who have met them in the
darkness of the night none have come back alive.”
Bomba was impressed despite himself. Nevertheless his
determination remained unshaken.
“The cause of Bomba is a good one,” he said simply. “Bomba does
not fear the evil spirits.”
“Hondura knows that Bomba does not fear anything living,” the chief
responded. “But he has no arrow that will sink into the breasts of the
dead. He has no knife that can reach their hearts. They will not fear
when Bomba defies them. They will laugh.”
“I am going,” the lad declared.
The old chief nodded his head as though, knowing Bomba, he had
expected some such answer from the boy.
“Go then. But go only to the island of the big cats. Do not go to the
place above the island where the city with the towers of gold stood.
Find Japazy, the half-breed, and return with speed. Hondura and the
little Pirah will watch for you. And we will have prayers made by the
medicine man that you do not meet the evil spirits.”
“But do not go yet,” pleaded Pirah, clinging to his hand. “Pirah wants
you to stay days, many days. You are tired. You have been fighting.
We will make big feast if you will stay in the maloca of Hondura for a
time.”
Bomba returned the pressure of the warm little hand affectionately.
“Pirah is good and Hondura too is good,” he said earnestly. “Bomba
would be glad to stay. But he must go.”
He turned to the chief.
“I go first into the jungle to hunt for Casson,” he said. “I will look for
him till I find him or feel sure that he is dead. If I find him, I will bring
him back to stay with Hondura. If I do not find him, I will go on to find
Japazy on Jaguar Island.”
Pipina set up a wail, but Bomba checked her.
“Do not cry, Pipina,” he said. “Bomba has many times gone into the
jungle and come back again. Did he not go to the Moving Mountain
and return? Did he not come back from the Giant Cataract and the
island of snakes? The gods will watch over me, and you can stay
here safe with the women of Hondura’s tribe and help them with their
cooking and their weaving. And you can tell them of the hole in the
floor and how you were wiser than all the warriors of Nascanora.”
The last was cunningly put, and the look of pride that came into the
old woman’s eyes showed that if the Araos women failed to
appreciate her strategy it would not be for lack of telling.
Bomba turned to the chief.
“Your heart is big, Hondura, and your heart is good,” he said.
“Bomba will not forget.”
“It is but little that Hondura is doing for Bomba,” the old chieftain
replied. “Did not Bomba save my people? Did he not bring back the
women and little children that Nascanora’s bucks had stolen? My
people would die for Bomba. And I will tell my braves to hunt for
Casson. Wherever they go their eyes will be open for the old white
man. They will be looking while Bomba is on his way to Jaguar
Island. And if he is alive, they will find him.”
The assurance was an immense comfort to the heart of Bomba. If
his own search for Casson failed, he would know that a host of sharp
eyes were taking up his work. All that could be done would be done
for the old man he loved.
He stayed at the maloca only long enough to get some more strings
for his bow and to replenish his stock of arrows and put an additional
edge on his machete. Then, with a warm farewell to Hondura, Pirah,
Pipina, and the assembled people of the tribe, he plunged into the
jungle.
He thought longingly of the “fire stick” and the cartridges that had
been destroyed in the blazing cabin. He took the now useless
revolver from his pouch where he carried it in a waterproof covering
and looked at it sadly. It was a fine weapon, and he had learned to
use it effectively, though not yet with the perfect accuracy of the
machete and the bow and arrows.
“The fire stick might not hurt the ghosts from the sunken city,” he
pondered, as he turned the revolver lovingly in his hands; “but
against the beasts of the jungle and the braves of Nascanora it
speaks with the voice of death. And who knows but what it might
save my life when I reach the place of the big cats.”
Again his anger flamed against the headhunters.
“They may still, by robbing me of my cartridges, be the cause of my
death,” he murmured.
But he had the fatalistic philosophy born of his life in the jungle. The
cartridges were gone. He could not help it. Perhaps it had been
decreed. Who was he, Bomba, to find fault with the laws that
governed the world?
For all the rest of that day he hunted feverishly for some trace of
Casson. Hardly a foot of ground escaped his eager scrutiny. He
searched every thicket, explored every swamp. At times, when he
felt it was safe, he raised his voice in the hope that perhaps Casson
might hear him. But all his efforts were fruitless. There was no trace
or sound of his half-demented protector.
During his search he had gathered some turtle eggs, and these he
roasted at night over a fire before the opening of a cave that he had
chosen for the night’s shelter.
The food was succulent, the fire comforting, and the cave reasonably
safe. Bomba built up the fire so that it should serve through the night
to keep off the prowling denizens of the forest, and made his refuge
secure by rolling a great stone that no animal could dislodge to the
entrance of the cave.
Then he lay down and slept, not opening his tired eyes till the first
break of dawn.
All that day and the next Bomba hunted for Cody Casson. He had
given himself three days before he would relinquish the quest as
hopeless.
Occasionally he came upon traces of the headhunters. But the
tracks were cold, and Bomba calculated that they were at least five
days old. If the bucks were in that region at all, they were probably
lurking in the vicinity of the cabin, where, soon or late, they could
count on Bomba’s reappearance.
Toward the evening of the third day Bomba caught sight of
something strange lying at the roots of a great tree in one of the
most extensive swamps with which the region abounded.
At first sight it looked like a crumpled heap of rags. Bomba’s thought
was that it was the remains of an old hammock or native rug thrown
aside as useless.
But there was something in the shape of it that made him revise his
opinion, and he approached it with the caution that he always used
when in the presence of something which he did not understand.
When at last he stood beside it he started back with a gasp.
It was a skeleton that lay there amid the shreds of garments that had
previously clothed the body!
Bomba had seen such grisly sights before. They were not
uncommon in the jungle, where natives without number met their
end by the jaws of the puma and the fangs of the snake.
No, it was not the mere sight of a skeleton that made Bomba start so
violently.
It was the fact that the skeleton was that of a white man!
 CHAPTER IX
THE SKELETON

Bomba knew at once that the poor remnant of humanity that lay
before him was not that of a native of the country.
He knew it by the character of the hair that still adhered to the scalp,
by the fragments of skin that still were in evidence.
And he knew by the clothes, which, though tattered into shreds, were
similar to those that had been worn by Gillis and Dorn, by the men of
the Parkhurst family. They were of heavy khaki cut after the civilized
fashion.
Some hunter, no doubt; a hunter after big game or a hunter of rubber
trees, who had come into the dark recesses of the Amazonian
jungle.
Various signs indicated that the body had been there for some time.
How the man had died would never be known. Somewhere in the
civilized world he was marked down as “missing.” The jungle kept its
secrets well.
Bomba stood looking down at the skeleton with a strange feeling in
his heart. This man had been white! He had been a brother to
Bomba, of the same blood, of the same race! A sense of kinship
tugged at the lad’s heart.
And because he had been white, Bomba determined that the poor
remains should have decent burial. He sought out a suitable piece of
wood and with his machete fashioned a rude spade. With this he set
to work and soon had dug a grave in the soft and muddy ground.
He lifted the skeleton reverently and bore it to the grave. As he did
so, something dropped with a metallic sound. He paid no attention to
this at the moment, but bestowed the bones carefully in the grave.