Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.” How very true.
Today, October 23, 2022, is the 39th anniversary of the deadly terror attack against the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which was bombed by Lebanese terrorists supported and directed by Iran . The attack, which killed 241 American servicemen (220 Marines serving in the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines; 16 Navy personnel; and three Army soldiers), was the deadliest single-day death toll for the Marines since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima and the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
The Marines were in Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force trying to stabilize the country, which had been torn by a civil war between Christians—with their ally Israel—and Muslims. A U.S. contingent entered Lebanon in July of 1982 to oversee the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Israel had invaded to displace. That American detachment left in September of 1982, but U.S. forces returned later that month when violence resumed.
The story of the Marines in Lebanon can only be described as a tragic comedy of errors. President Ronald Reagan foolishly believed sending in the Marines would stabilize the region. Instead of insisting that the Marines insert into Beirut with the required tanks, artillery, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to ensure their own security, and to also return fire if attacked, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, went to extreme measures to “defang” the Marines through rules of engagement that forced the Marines to operate from a defensive posture. This included reducing heavy weapons and ordering the Marines to keep their weapons unloaded to prevent accidental shootings. The Marine Corps wasn’t designed to keep the peace, the Marine Corps exists to wreak havoc on bad guys. The events in Lebanon drove home this point.
After the attack on the Marine barracks, Weinberger committed the unforgivable sin of ensuring there would be no retaliation or escalation by the U.S. military against Iran or forces in Lebanon—even though 241 servicemen had been murdered.
President Bill Clinton and his cabinet didn’t learn much from the events in Lebanon. Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, turned down a request from the ground commander of U.S. forces in Mogadishu, Somalia for armor (tanks). The failure of Aspin to approve sending tanks to Somalia weakened the ability of the U.S. Army to defend itself. During a mission on October 3 and 4, 1993, two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. Without tanks to blow up technicals (trucks with heavy weapons mounted on them) and break through barricades, the U.S. Army became engaged in a long-running firefight resulting in the deaths of 18 soldiers. Had just two M1 Abrams tanks with dozer blades on the front been authorized by Aspin for use in Mogadishu, the outcome would have been much different. (My first duty assignment when I served in the Marines was being assigned to a Tank battalion. I reenlisted and joined the infantry, and was then assigned to a Scout/Sniper platoon with 2nd Battalion 8th Marines.)
The events in Somalia can be viewed in this video Black Hawk Down.
There are grave similarities between the events in Lebanon and Somalia—poor mission planning, poor execution and eventual withdrawal of the U.S.
A Simple Plan
In April 1983, the U.S. embassy in Beirut was struck by a 400-pound suicide truck bomb, which killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, and wiped out the CIA’s Middle East bureau. When the bombing proved to be an overwhelming success, terrorists began to think on an even larger scale—attack the U.S. military peacekeepers directly in Lebanon.
This is where the Marines of 1st Battalion, 8th Marines stayed when they landed in Lebanon. This four-story structure was referred to as the BLT for Battalion Landing Team building.
Unknown to the U.S. military at the time, the National Security Agency (NSA) had made a diplomatic communications intercept on September 26, 1983, in which the Iranian Intelligence Service provided explicit instructions to the Iranian ambassador in Damascus (a known terrorist) to attack the Marines at Beirut International Airport. The suicide attackers struck 28 days later, with word of the intercept stuck in the intelligence pipeline until days after the attack. There is an eerie similarity between the attack on the Marines in Beirut and the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, investigators identified multiple instances of messages that indicated an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, but the messages were either ignored or deciphered too late.
This photo was taken within a few minutes of the blast. People who witnessed the explosion yelled, ‘The BLT building is gone!’
As s the case with most terrorist attacks, a simple plan resulted in catastrophic casualties. On the morning of October 23, 1983, terrorists hijacked a water delivery truck on its way to the Beirut International Airport Marine barracks and sent another truck, loaded with explosives, in its place. Ismalal Ascari, an Iranian, drove the 19-ton truck over the barbed wire fence around the barracks, past two guard posts, and into the center of the Marine barracks compound. (The lack of security around the Marine barracks was appalling. The fact that the Marines were in the building in the first place proved a tragic mistake). According to the FBI and other intelligence agencies that investigated the attack, the resulting explosion from the hijacked water truck was the largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on the face of the Earth, with a force equal to between 15,000 and 21,000 pounds of TNT. In other words, only the use of the atomic bomb on Japan on two occasions in 1945, were larger than the explosion that destroyed the Marine barracks in Lebanon.
The aftermath of the bombing.
The suicide truck bombing, along with a similar bombing that day which killed 58 French paratroopers, was perpetrated by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah (“Party of God”), which was created, supported and directed by Iran. The U.S. did nothing to punish Iran in 1983 or any time thereafter for attacking the Marines. The attack on the Marine barracks and lack of retaliation by the U.S. emboldened terrorists in the Middle East. Two years after the bombing of the Marine barracks, TWA Flight 847 was hijacked and forced to land in Beirut, Lebanon. Navy diver Robert Stethem was beaten and murdered, and his body was dumped on the tarmac at the airport. One of the terrorists associated with the killing of Stethem remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, Mohammed Ali Hamadei. Another terrorist involved in the killing of Stethem died of cancer in Lebanon on October 9, 2021. Atwa should have been killed by U.S. Special Forces or killed in a drone strike. Hamadei, because he is still alive, should be killed by U.S. Special Forces or a drone strike.
Semper Fi to the 241 service members who lost their lives on this date. I hope all of you remain immortal because your sacrifice is remembered.
Until next week,
Brittain Ladd
