thedrifter
10-23-06, 07:40 AM
Posted Monday October 23, 2006 07:00 AM EDT
Death in Beirut: What Were the Lessons, and Did We Learn Them?
By Jack Kelly
Twenty-three years ago today, more than 300 U.S. Marines were sleeping inside a makeshift barracks beside the Beirut airport as a balmy dawn was breaking over Lebanon, when a smiling man with a bushy mustache drove a Mercedes truck loaded with explosives into the building. The ensuing blast, estimated to be the largest non-nuclear explosion ever, lifted the four-story building off its foundations and caused it to collapse, killing 241 Americans.
Why were the Marines there? Why were they left vulnerable to such an attack? What lessons did and should we learn from the incident? These questions remain as relevant today as they were two decades ago.
When President Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981, he saw the conflict in the Middle East in terms of America’s ongoing struggle with the Soviet Union. Administration officials pointed to the Soviets as the primary source of world terrorism. Intelligence analysts knew that this was nonsense. In the Middle East, Cold War loyalties were a thin veneer covering far more deeply rooted conflicts.
The path to catastrophe began in June 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, a country that had been mired in an intermittent civil war for the previous seven years. The U.S. acquiesced in the attack, which was aimed at eliminating Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters in the country. But Reagan grew alarmed when the Israeli army put Beirut under siege and launched a devastating bombing campaign. In late summer his envoy Philip Habib negotiated a ceasefire among the major combatants, with the proviso that a multinational peacekeeping force would step in to oversee the departure of PLO fighters to Tunis and to protect Muslim civilians.
Intervention in Lebanon was not a new experience for the United States. In 1958 President Eisenhower had sent 14,000 troops into the country to calm civil unrest and installed a new president. The operation had succeeded with almost no casualties.
The initial deployment of 800 Marines, along with French and Italian forces, moved into the country in August 1982. The PLO militia was soon gone, and the Marines withdrew in early September.
Four days later, Lebanon’s Christian Phalangist president-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated. In response, Israeli armored columns attacked Muslim West Beirut, and Israelis stood by while their Phalangist allies massacred more than 700 Palestinian civilians in two refugee camps.
The U.S. Marines returned, this time for a prolonged stay. Their mission was vague. They were to serve as an “interposition force,” a “presence.” They would be strictly neutral and would not engage in combat.
William B. Quandt, an expert on Middle East policy, observed, “Lebanon is a harsh teacher. Those who try to ignore its complex realities . . . usually end up paying a high price.”
Complex is the key word. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who opposed the Marine deployment from the beginning, numbered 26 different armed groups contending for power in the country, including Maronite Christians and Druze Muslims. Syria, Iran, and Israel all had their own interests in Lebanon. As Weinberger’s military aide, Gen. Colin Powell, said of the mission, “Beirut wasn’t sensible and never did serve a purpose.”
The Marine deployment dragged on for a year; its numbers crept up to 1,800. Under the rules of engagement, most of them were not allowed to load their weapons.
During the autumn of 1983 the situation in Lebanon grew increasingly violent. An Israeli withdrawal left the high ground around Beirut to the militias. Marines were being killed by sniper and mortar fire. Ships from the U.S. Sixth Fleet responded by shelling Druze and Shiite positions. This military activity, and the American efforts to train the armed forces of the Christian-dominated Lebanese government, convinced Muslims that the multinational force had taken sides. Warnings about this change in perception went unheeded in Washington.
Alarms had also been issued about the danger of the Marines’ exposed position. The barracks was protected only by a fence, concertina wire, and a few obstacles made out of sewer pipe. Intelligence analysts had raised the risk of terror attacks as early as July 1982, before the Marines’ arrival. The warning was brought home in April 1983 when terrorists exploded a car bomb at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 17 Americans and more than 40 Lebanese. Weinberger noted that U.S. forces were “sitting in a bull’s eye.”
On Sunday morning, October 23, disaster struck. The terrorist was a young man from a poor religious family. He was probably backed by the Iranians. He managed to dodge all the obstacles and crash the truck into the building’s lobby. For the American military, the blast resulted in the largest single-day loss of life since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Adding to the carnage was a similar and almost simultaneous attack on French forces two miles away that killed 58 paratroopers.
An official report issued two months later dryly criticized Marine commanders for failing “to take the security measures necessary.” Reagan used the verdict to push the blame to subordinates, ignoring the sections of the document that criticized the indeterminate mission of the U.S. forces. Two days after the bombing, the President launched an invasion of Grenada. He would successfully use the victory in that lopsided operation to shield himself from the negative consequences of Beirut during the 1984 election campaign.
In Lebanon, the Marines retreated to bunkers and trench fortifications. Casualties continued. During his January 1984 State of the Union address, Reagan asserted that America’s continued military presence in Lebanon was “central to our credibility on a global scale.” Two weeks later he ordered the Marines out.
It has become axiomatic that the main lesson of the 1983 Beirut debacle was about the danger of appeasing terrorists. This message was underscored by the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who pointed to the hasty withdrawal as proof that the Americans were “paper tigers.” “The Marines fled after two explosions,” he boasted.
Bin Laden’s simple-minded and ahistorical statement was taken to heart by many Americans. In Beirut, said John Lehman, a member of the national 9/11 commission, “we told the world that terrorism succeeds.”
This year has witnessed a disheartening reprise of the early-1980s conflict in Lebanon: Another Israeli invasion with tacit U.S. support. Another outcry over civilian casualties. Another multinational force. Though the United States will not participate in this latest peacekeeping effort, its armed forces are again committed to an open-ended mission in a Middle Eastern country. They are again coping with a complex conflict rooted in ancient animosities. Administration officials have again drawn the situation in stark black and white, this time in terms of the war on terrorism rather the struggle with communism. The President has again proclaimed that vital national interests are at stake.
It’s easy to read the tragedy in Beirut as a warning about the consequences of appeasement. But the incident has suggested to some a more nuanced lesson about the need for more careful strategic thinking before committing U.S. forces, about the limits of military intervention, and about the danger of ignoring excruciatingly complex realities in favor of ideology-tinted simplifications.
—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).
Ellie
Death in Beirut: What Were the Lessons, and Did We Learn Them?
By Jack Kelly
Twenty-three years ago today, more than 300 U.S. Marines were sleeping inside a makeshift barracks beside the Beirut airport as a balmy dawn was breaking over Lebanon, when a smiling man with a bushy mustache drove a Mercedes truck loaded with explosives into the building. The ensuing blast, estimated to be the largest non-nuclear explosion ever, lifted the four-story building off its foundations and caused it to collapse, killing 241 Americans.
Why were the Marines there? Why were they left vulnerable to such an attack? What lessons did and should we learn from the incident? These questions remain as relevant today as they were two decades ago.
When President Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981, he saw the conflict in the Middle East in terms of America’s ongoing struggle with the Soviet Union. Administration officials pointed to the Soviets as the primary source of world terrorism. Intelligence analysts knew that this was nonsense. In the Middle East, Cold War loyalties were a thin veneer covering far more deeply rooted conflicts.
The path to catastrophe began in June 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, a country that had been mired in an intermittent civil war for the previous seven years. The U.S. acquiesced in the attack, which was aimed at eliminating Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters in the country. But Reagan grew alarmed when the Israeli army put Beirut under siege and launched a devastating bombing campaign. In late summer his envoy Philip Habib negotiated a ceasefire among the major combatants, with the proviso that a multinational peacekeeping force would step in to oversee the departure of PLO fighters to Tunis and to protect Muslim civilians.
Intervention in Lebanon was not a new experience for the United States. In 1958 President Eisenhower had sent 14,000 troops into the country to calm civil unrest and installed a new president. The operation had succeeded with almost no casualties.
The initial deployment of 800 Marines, along with French and Italian forces, moved into the country in August 1982. The PLO militia was soon gone, and the Marines withdrew in early September.
Four days later, Lebanon’s Christian Phalangist president-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated. In response, Israeli armored columns attacked Muslim West Beirut, and Israelis stood by while their Phalangist allies massacred more than 700 Palestinian civilians in two refugee camps.
The U.S. Marines returned, this time for a prolonged stay. Their mission was vague. They were to serve as an “interposition force,” a “presence.” They would be strictly neutral and would not engage in combat.
William B. Quandt, an expert on Middle East policy, observed, “Lebanon is a harsh teacher. Those who try to ignore its complex realities . . . usually end up paying a high price.”
Complex is the key word. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who opposed the Marine deployment from the beginning, numbered 26 different armed groups contending for power in the country, including Maronite Christians and Druze Muslims. Syria, Iran, and Israel all had their own interests in Lebanon. As Weinberger’s military aide, Gen. Colin Powell, said of the mission, “Beirut wasn’t sensible and never did serve a purpose.”
The Marine deployment dragged on for a year; its numbers crept up to 1,800. Under the rules of engagement, most of them were not allowed to load their weapons.
During the autumn of 1983 the situation in Lebanon grew increasingly violent. An Israeli withdrawal left the high ground around Beirut to the militias. Marines were being killed by sniper and mortar fire. Ships from the U.S. Sixth Fleet responded by shelling Druze and Shiite positions. This military activity, and the American efforts to train the armed forces of the Christian-dominated Lebanese government, convinced Muslims that the multinational force had taken sides. Warnings about this change in perception went unheeded in Washington.
Alarms had also been issued about the danger of the Marines’ exposed position. The barracks was protected only by a fence, concertina wire, and a few obstacles made out of sewer pipe. Intelligence analysts had raised the risk of terror attacks as early as July 1982, before the Marines’ arrival. The warning was brought home in April 1983 when terrorists exploded a car bomb at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 17 Americans and more than 40 Lebanese. Weinberger noted that U.S. forces were “sitting in a bull’s eye.”
On Sunday morning, October 23, disaster struck. The terrorist was a young man from a poor religious family. He was probably backed by the Iranians. He managed to dodge all the obstacles and crash the truck into the building’s lobby. For the American military, the blast resulted in the largest single-day loss of life since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Adding to the carnage was a similar and almost simultaneous attack on French forces two miles away that killed 58 paratroopers.
An official report issued two months later dryly criticized Marine commanders for failing “to take the security measures necessary.” Reagan used the verdict to push the blame to subordinates, ignoring the sections of the document that criticized the indeterminate mission of the U.S. forces. Two days after the bombing, the President launched an invasion of Grenada. He would successfully use the victory in that lopsided operation to shield himself from the negative consequences of Beirut during the 1984 election campaign.
In Lebanon, the Marines retreated to bunkers and trench fortifications. Casualties continued. During his January 1984 State of the Union address, Reagan asserted that America’s continued military presence in Lebanon was “central to our credibility on a global scale.” Two weeks later he ordered the Marines out.
It has become axiomatic that the main lesson of the 1983 Beirut debacle was about the danger of appeasing terrorists. This message was underscored by the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who pointed to the hasty withdrawal as proof that the Americans were “paper tigers.” “The Marines fled after two explosions,” he boasted.
Bin Laden’s simple-minded and ahistorical statement was taken to heart by many Americans. In Beirut, said John Lehman, a member of the national 9/11 commission, “we told the world that terrorism succeeds.”
This year has witnessed a disheartening reprise of the early-1980s conflict in Lebanon: Another Israeli invasion with tacit U.S. support. Another outcry over civilian casualties. Another multinational force. Though the United States will not participate in this latest peacekeeping effort, its armed forces are again committed to an open-ended mission in a Middle Eastern country. They are again coping with a complex conflict rooted in ancient animosities. Administration officials have again drawn the situation in stark black and white, this time in terms of the war on terrorism rather the struggle with communism. The President has again proclaimed that vital national interests are at stake.
It’s easy to read the tragedy in Beirut as a warning about the consequences of appeasement. But the incident has suggested to some a more nuanced lesson about the need for more careful strategic thinking before committing U.S. forces, about the limits of military intervention, and about the danger of ignoring excruciatingly complex realities in favor of ideology-tinted simplifications.
—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).
Ellie