[1.40 Sy IN YET another crude exercise in…]

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Sy

IN YET another crude exercise in US six-gun diplomacy, President Reagan last weekend from the North. support moves to oust Syria unleashed the biggest American air strike since the Vietnam war. Indeed the Lebanese President Gemayel, whom the Atter Israeli planes knocked Israelis helped instal in office, out a Syrian radar station, US and who was engrossed in talks bombers trom the Sixth Fleet with Reagan last week, has been in Lebanon. Two were shot struck at Syrian troop positions looking for some kind of deal with the Syrians. down. Meanwhile other US partners State Department representatives declared that "Syria is an in crime - the conservative obstacle to peace in the Leban- Arab Gulf states, and the Euroon, and through pressure of pean goverments with troops in the multinational "peace every sort we intend to surkeeping" force - have all mount that obstacle." Caspar Weinberger told reporters that expressed reservations over the the USA was defending its latest US military moves. "right of unimpeded aerial For Reagan to step beyond the reconnaissance" in the Middle present level of hostilities and East. seek through military force to subdue and defeat the Syrians This is the blunt voice of imperialist rulers who are as would therefore be an enormous determined to assert their will undertaking, requiring a vast by force of arms thousands of increase in the US forces on the miles away in the Middle East as ground, currently numbering they were when, much closer to the USA, they crushed the inde- The Israeli regime, though pendence of the people of eager to trumpet its even closer Grenada six weeks ago. working relationship with the USA after Shamir's talks with But the escalation of US Reagan, is highly unlikely to military intervention in Lebanon seek even a subordinate part in is by no means as simple as was an all-out war with Syria. the invasion of the small Carib- But there is no doubt that bean island. Syria has been every clash and air raid makes impressively rearmed with the the world a more dangerous latest Soviet weaponry, and has place: and nobody after Grenada declared its determination to can be quite sure what the USA resist the USA in a "just war will do next. against wrongful aggression." Caught between the barbar40,000 Syrian troops are firm- ism of the Israeli invaders and ly entrenched in the North of their Phalangist allies in the Lebanon. By backing the South, and the Syrian forces in "rebel' PLO forces in their the North, and under the guns of bloody war against the leader- the US Sixth Fleet, the people of ship of Yassir Arafat, they have Lebanon and the dispossessed consolidated control over power- Palestinians face a future of fui Palestinian forces bloodshed, oppression and There is no evidence that suffering.

Reagan's Israeli allies - who The demand for the withdrawal of all troops from the Lebanon overcome the years of distrust - imperialist, Israeli and Syrian their invasion of South Lebanon — must be taken up by the intermanagement to perpetuate national workers' movement.