Never Forget

[USMC Chuter]

These Marines served, lived, and died with honor and were some of the first casualties of the Global War on Terror-before the term had been coined. Let's not forget that 22 years ago these Marines joined the ranks of countless thousands before them who died in service to their country. Semper Fidelis.





By Claude Salhani
UPI International Editor
Published October 19, 2005


WASHINGTON -- Quite unlike the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Marines in Lebanon came in peace -- and at the request of the Lebanese government. This Sunday, Oct. 23, will mark the 22nd anniversary of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut where 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, lost their lives.

At approximately 6:22 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 23, 1983, a lone terrorist driving a yellow Mercedes-Benz stake-bed truck loaded with explosives accelerated through the public parking lot south of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit Battalion Landing Team headquarters building, detonating about 12,000 pounds of hexogen.


According to the official Department of Defense commission report, the force of the explosion ripped the building from its foundation. The building then imploded upon itself and almost all of the occupants were crushed or trapped inside the wreckage.

"It was one of the largest noises I've ever heard in my entire career," said retired Marine Maj. Robert T. Jordan, the 24th MAU public affairs officer at the time of the bombing. Jordan was in his rack in an adjacent building when the explosion split the still morning air and showered him with glass and pulverized concrete.

It was also the heaviest loss the Marine Corps suffered in any single day since the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.

A few moments later another suicide bomber rammed his truck into the "Drakkar," a building occupied by French paratroopers. Fifty-eight French soldiers perished in this attack.

The Marines, the French, the Italian and the Brits had come in peace -- to help secure peace in Lebanon. How, and why, did they become the enemy?

First some history: the Lebanese civil war that had started in 1975 had entered a new phase. It was more of an undeclared lull, with Christians in east Beirut and the Muslim-Leftist-Palestinian alliance on the other side in West Beirut, each holding their ground. Beirut was living through an extended cease-fire. It was as though the combatants had grown tired of fighting. In addition to the dozens of armed militias, Palestinian commandos and Syrian regular forces controlled large swaths of the country.

On June 3, 1982, Israel's ambassador to Britain, Sholmo Argov, was shot as he left a dinner reception at London's Dorchester Hotel. The attack was carried out by three members of Abu Nidal's group, a renegade unit at odds with the Palestine Liberation Organization chief, Yasser Arafat. Argov was hit in the head, but survived.

Two days later, on June 5, Israel launched Operation Peace for Galilee -- a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. The invasion was initially designed to push back Palestinian forces operating in south Lebanon, north of the Litani River, thus placing their heavy artillery out of range of the Jewish settlements in the northern Galilee. However, then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon saw an opportunity to suppress the PLO once and for all, and pushed his troops all the way to Beirut.

Israeli forces, supported by their Lebanese Christian allies, laid siege to West Beirut for a grueling 88 days, pounding the city with heavy artillery as well as subjecting it to intense aerial and naval bombardments.

Eventually Philip Habib, President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, negotiated a cease-fire. The Palestinians agreed to leave Lebanon for new exiles in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen and other countries so long as an international military force could protect the Palestinians who remained behind.

This saw the creation of the Multinational Force, consisting of U.S. Marines, French and Italian troops (the Brits later sent a token force). On Sunday, Aug. 21, Arafat, protected by French troops left Lebanon from Beirut's port, heading for Tunis. Over the next 12 days, 14,383 Palestinian commandos and Syria soldiers, as well as 644 women and children were dispersed around the Arab world.

Shortly after the departure of Arafat and the PLO, Reagan declared a premature victory and ordered the Marines out. "A job well done," he said.

On the afternoon of Sept. 14, 1982, Bachir Gemayel, Lebanon's president-elect, was killed by a massive car bomb in an office building in East Beirut. That evening -- with the multinational force gone -- Christian militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

Approximately 1,300 people were massacred -- mostly Palestinians, but also some Lebanese, Syrians, etc. Afterward, though, many Palestinians disappeared from the Beirut Sports Stadium, where they had been detained. Hundreds of boys and men were trucked away never to appear again. To this day, no one really knows where all the bodies are buried, though apparently a huge number are undoubtedly in the mass grave within the camp. But that's another story.

After the massacre the Lebanese government asked for the return of the Multinational Force -- and they did return. They came in peace.

If mistakes were committed in Lebanon -- and they were -- blame should not befall the Marines, or the French paras who paid the ultimate price for peace.

The error was due to lack of coherent foreign policy coming from both Washington and Paris, and their unequivocal support of Lebanon's President Amin Gemayel. That is what lost the hearts and minds of a segment of the Lebanese population the Marines had worked so hard to win.

They had come in peace. Two hundred and forty-one of them never left.

[SGRock]

Thanks Chuter. I almost fogot that yesterday was the "anniversary" (for lack of a better term) of that fateful day. I was in 3/2 and on Alpha Incremant air alert. We were all set to go. Even rode on the trucks to Cherry Point to board C-130's. We sat there waiting to get orgabized into sticks and then we were told to get back on the trucks. I had never been so angry in my life than when I heard we were not going. Instead they sent another unit. Just like every other Marine around the world, that day, we wanted blood. We wanted revenge. We would not get it though. One day, those involved and responsible will burn in hell for what they did.

Semper Fi my brothers, Rest in Peace.

[Grimmy]

The Marines at Beirut had a good defensive setup. There's no way this could have happened if they'd have been allowed to keep that defensive setup.

The Ambassador decided that all that defensive work "sent the wrong signal" to the locals and ordered it dismantled. The Marines refused and the Ambassador went over their heads and pulled the usual politico crap.
The Marines were forced to reduce and largely disarm sections of their perimeter. They obeyed orders and died for it.

That Ambassador and everyone in The State Dept. that had to do with that jerkoff should have done the honorable thing and shot themseves.

[SGRock]

Sounds like the Ambassador in Tehran in '79 that ordered that the Marine Guards only use #7 shot in their shotguns. He did not want to "hurt" anyone. When the Marines were outside of the embassy building, as the Iranians came over the walls and the gates and fired into the crowd, they kept coming. From what I understand one of the Iranians actually took the shotgun from his hands and attacked him with it.

When I was in Mogadishu, The Ambassador did not want us to wear sidearms. Just like Grimmy said, it would "...send the wrong message." Our det Commander gave him the telephone number to the Company office in Nairobi and told him to complain to the Colonel.