We have not
gotten it right

Lance Cpl. Terrence Rich of Brooklyn.

Lance Cpl. Steven Jones of Brooklyn.

Lance Cpl. Warren Richardson of Brooklyn.

Cpl. Obrian Weekes of Brooklyn.

Lance Cpl. Dennis Thompson of the Bronx.

Take a moment to remember five beautiful young sons of our city and the 236 other Marines who were murdered by a suicide bomber at the edge of the Beirut International Airport on the morning of Oct. 23, 1983.

By one sentry's account, the bomber was smiling as he drove the truck bomb into the Marines' barracks. Smiles were no doubt also in abundance in Hezbollah, the terror organization which perpetrated the attack. Hezbollah did and continues to do the bidding of Iran, whose leaders surely had big smiles of their own.

Neither Hezbollah nor Iran could have been much troubled by the tears of the dead Marines' families. Rich was survived by his mother, Elizabeth Harris.

"It's very, very hard for a mother to accept that she will never see her sons again, and hold him in her arms and tell him how much she loves him," she told a reporter.

President Ronald Reagan promised righteous retribution "when perpetrators are identified." The CIA and the National Security Agency built a convincing case against Hezbollah, documenting that Iran had bankrolled the attack and supplied the explosives.

Meanwhile, the French concluded that Hezbollah was also behind a bombing that killed 58 at its Beirut headquarters minutes after the attack on our Marines. We agreed to join the French in a joint air attack on Hezbollah.

On Nov. 17, 1983, pilots on the aircraft carriers Kennedy and Eisenhower were preparing to do their part when they were instructed to stand down. The French went ahead, striking numerous Hezbollah targets and hitting the group's headquarters with napalm.

Reagan also had pledged that the bombing would not drive us from Lebanon. We withdrew four months later and soon afterwards the White House began to arrange secret weapons shipments to Iran. The point man in the attempted trade of arms for hostages to Iran was that Marine among Marines, Lt. Col. Oliver North.

On June 25, 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 American airmen at Khobar Towers in Dharan, Saudi Arabia. President Bill Clinton vowed "no stone would be left unturned" in the effort to identify and punish the perpetrators.

Again, our intelligence people identified Hezbollah and Iran as being behind the attack. Again, our President did nothing.

"As for the 19 dead warriors and their families, their commander in chief had deserted them," then FBI Director Louis Freeh later wrote.

When the twin towers here in New York were attacked on 9/11, we had no immediate evidence that either Hezbollah or Iran were involved. The same was true about Iraq, but that did not stop us from going after Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Now, mired in the war in Iraq, we face the possibility Iran may soon acquire nuclear WMDs. Much of the world is as nervous about this prospect as we are, and Iran has come under such international pressure it may have felt need of a distraction.

Iran has continued to direct and support Hezbollah, which recently said its motto is "Death to America" and declared itself to be engaged in "open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."

So, Hezbollah could not have needed much prodding to begin killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers as well as firing rockets across the Lebanon border.

The Israelis had already gone into Gaza after Hamas kidnapped one of its soldiers. They now went after Hezbollah, bombing Hezbollah headquarters as the U.S. backed down from doing more than two decades ago.

Israel also moved to keep Iran from supplying its terrorist proxy. Israeli warplanes hit various bridges and roadways as well as the airport near where our Marines were attacked in 1983.

Twenty-three years after that suicide bomber murdered Rich and Jones and Richardson and Weeks and Thompson and 236 other Marines, the question is who's smiling now?

Originally July 16, 2006

Ellie