Oct 23, 1983

[Thelakedoctor]

Do you remember what happened?

[neuvocat]

1. Space Shuttle blew up?

[Terwilliger]

4. That was January 1986

[Cooley Hurd]

2. The day Reagan let 146 Marines die in Beruit?

[AWD]

7. Bingo

Reagan let the Marines die on that date

[ChoralScholar]

14. Gosh... I was just a kid

but I remember hearing it on the news. Sad, Sad deal.

[RobertSeattle]

And then turned tail and run

invoking 20 years of terrorists setting their sites on Americans. (Sorry RW'ers - it wasn't Clinton's fault)

And dont' forget the diversionary Grenada Invasion afterward to get America's mind OFF the Beirut Debacle.

[Aidoneus]

22. that's the one thing Reagan did right

(err.. the first part, anyway, certainly not referring to Grenada with that..)

They never should've been there to begin with! It was clear long before the barracks bombing that US military had just gotten involved to help the Israeli invaders and their Christian puppet regime kill their rivals--and the latter didn't take that submissively, hence the shrill demonization that follows in official propagandized versions of events.

[Terwilliger]

3. Beirut bombing?

not up on my specific dates

[Thelakedoctor]

6. You got it.

20 years ago we were attacked by the same radicals that keep killing the Israelis.

[Terwilliger]

10. the same radicals

that represented the oppressed feelings of everyone in the region?

[Thelakedoctor]

13. Still you can't blame Israel for kicking some terrorist ass

We should have done the same thing back in 1983 and this whole mess would be over.

[wuushew]

15. Israel tried that already...with regrettable results

In May 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in an attempt to crush strongholds of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which for years had used southern Lebanon as a staging point for terrorist strikes against Israel. Although the move against the PLO was successful, the invasion embroiled Israel in Lebanon's bitter and long-running civil war, and some Israeli forces remained in southern Lebanon until May 2000.

Israeli troops eventually drove the PLO first out of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and later out of Lebanon itself. PLO leader Yasir Arafat and his troops were forced to flee to Tunisia in 1983. But bloody factional fighting between Christians and Moslems and between pro-Syrian and pro-Palestinian forces continued undiminished.

In the most notorious incident stemming from the invasion, Israeli forces allowed Lebanese Christian Phalange militia troops to enter Beirut-area Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila in September 1982 in search of PLO guerrillas. The Phalange troops proceeded to randomly massacre hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children. An Israeli commission of inquiry subsequently found that Israeli officials were indirectly responsible for the massacre.

http://www.2facts.com/Ancillaries/index/v00018.asp

[punpirate]

19. And, that same commission...

... found one Ariel Sharon directly culpable because he made no attempt to stop it... the same man our current pResident referred to as "a man of peace."

No, we haven't learned a whole lot since October, 1983.

[Aidoneus]

16. oh bullshit

"we" actually did try, directly aiding Israel's criminal aggression against Lebanon and assisting in the thousands of deaths--not "terrorists ass", but thousands and thousands of innocent people having their lives destroyed. Even with such routine brutality unleashed on the Lebanese people across decades, with full US backing and approval, it still ended in the Israelis retreating after many years of resistance. Neither the US or Israel should have been involved in the first place, and I doubt your ignorance and arrogance would have changed the outcome one bit.

[calm_blue_ocean]

21. Problems with your rosy scenario:

1. I don't think a US occupation of Lebabnon would have quelled anti-US feeling in Aghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Iraq. In fact, I believe that a US occupation of Lebanon would have heightened anti-US feelings and thereby vastly expanded the terrorist fringe in those nations. Also would have increased the number of resistance fighters (aka terrorists) in Lebanon itself.

2. We didn't have an extra $87B back then. The USSR was more of a threat than it is now and a lot (perhaps too much) of our extra money needed to be spent to deal with that more credible threat.

3. It is instructive to look at what countries have not suffered Middle Eastern terrorist attacks. The general correlation is: the less your country is militarily involved in the Middle East, the less chance that your country will suffer a terrorist attack from there. Leaving Lebanon wasn't the problem -- the problem was that the US did not pull out of the region in a more comprehensive way.

[roughsatori]

8. The Marine Barracks were bombed that day but

I don't know it that is the answer being looked for..

[jenk]

5. Beirut

[AWD]

11. Beirut

Da best damn baseball player ever.

[MisterP]

9. Beirut bombing

(had The Clothes Have No Emperor within sixteen inches of me)
Didn't Ronnie refuse to take them on board the cruisers offshore?

[Zorra]

12. Beirut. n/t

[NewYorkerfromMass]

17. Important point here: IT WAS A SUICIDE BOMBING

Yep. Back in good old 1983 there was a terrorist who was motivated enough to excute a suicide bombing for "the cause".
Yep. He drove that truck full of explosives right into the lobby of the barracks bldg. and detonated the bomb.

So what did we learn in the next 20 years? Apparently not much. But I will say the death toll under Democratic vs. Republican admins. probably has the GOP coming out with a much higher rate of Americans perishing due to negligence (terrorism to civilians) and capricous deployment of our armed forces.

[MrPrax]

18. What date, then

did the USS New Jersey shell the Bekaa Valley for 14 hours? How many innocent civillians were killed. Oct 24, 1983

Even when the enemy attacks identified military targets, there still just 'terrorists' and retaliation against civillians (esp arab ones) is usually the remedy.

[PlanetBev]

20. I believe the number was more

I believe 283 died.

[wuushew]

23. Add one to the casualty list

"He's not really gone, as long as we remember him" -Doctor McCoy Star Trek II.

[AnnabelLee]

24. Locking

This thread was started by a disruptor who has since been banned.

AnnabelLee
DU Moderator