Bruce Joffe wrote this letter to the Economist:

SIR - While many who would deify Ronald Reagan praise his being "tough" against communism and terrorism ("The first post-Enlightenment president?", Economist.com, June 7th), I am thinking about the 241 Marines who were killed when their barracks were bombed in 1983. President Reagan's tough response was to abandon Lebanon. It is only now that we know this was a seminal event in Osama bin Laden's career; it was the moment he saw the United States as a paper tiger. The larger-than-life image of a president who secretly sold missiles to terrorists in exchange for hostages and who used the money to conduct a war prohibited by our United States Congress deserves adulation for just one thing: the stagecraft of a Hollywood icon.