I was reading up on IED's and truck bombs and it made me think about the horrendous attack on US military in 1983 in Lebanon. In 1982, while fighting the PLO and others, Israel attacked South Lebanon. The PLO retreated to North Lebanon. Meanwhile the long Lebanese Civil war had been going on for years essentially between Lebanese Christians and Muslims. The US, France and some others sent in some kind of peace keeping force to try and reduce the civil war violence within Lebanon. During the time it was there it had various fights with both Christian and Moslem elements of the Civil War. In October 1983 two trucks penetrated the peace keeping forces and detonated two huge deadly bombs. The bombs were amongst the largest ever non-nuke bombs. One detonated in American quarters killing 241 American soldiers (mostly marines) and one detonated in French quarters killing 58 French soldiers (paratroopers). For the US it was the single deadliest day for Marines since Iwo Jima in WWII and for US forces it was the single deadliest day since the start of the TET offensive. (The deadliness number for a day surprised me since American casualties in Vietnam really accellerated after the TET offensive and Americans dramatically increased its troop levels after the TET offensive.) It was a horrendous day for America. The US did not retaliate. Reagon was President. It was a couple of years after the Iranians had released American captives. Reportedly, then Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, convinced American officials retaliation would have dire affects with various Arab nations. The French had some sort of air response. Later, after some further fighting, the US launched some missles but they were not a direct retaliation for this bombing but rather some subsequent military actions. In 1984 the US removed its peace keeping forces from Lebanon. Strong evidence from a number of sources point to groups that ultimately announced and declared themselves as Hezbollah as the group responsable for the bombing. Evidence suggests that Iran and Syria supported this group. In 2001 Caspar Weinberger stated that nobody still knows who was behind this attack but in a court case in 2003 an American judge found Iran responsable and sued the country for over $2 billion for the families of the victems. Nothing has been collected. (my summary comes from a review of this incident from Wikipedia- there are many other facts within the article-read it) The attack and explosion were one of the most damaging direct attacks on the US ever and yet there was no retaliation. Subsequent to that there have been numerous terrorist attacks around the world at all sorts of targets within the West, in Saudi Arabia, in India, and countless nations. Some saw retaliation. Others didn't. Islamic fundamentalist terrorism continues in many forms and amongst many groups. There is no simple easy answer with regard to this situation. What do you think about this situation, about the American response ( a lack of a response is a de-facto response), about subsequent responses, and about the status of terrorist attacks?
Compared to the guy running this show, Reagan was a genius at foreign policy. Here is the reality. Until 9/11, we felt the world was a safe place. Since 9/11, the world (generally speaking, and for myself) doesn't feel any safer. We're reminded on the news, we're reminded every time we board an airplane. We're reminded in the presidential debates, we're reminded daily at DP P&R. There are people who say, finish the job. Fight until we win. And then offer on the other hand, that terror is not going to end on a battlefield in 6 months. That it is not going to end possibly even in our lifetimes. But still, fight the fight that has not made us safer, and ignore the intellectual honesty of trying to seek a better way to protect us, and all human life from the threat of terror. It's really a sad commentary that Americans were known around the world for innovation, for civil liberty, for democracy are now know for resort to the sword, instead of the rule of law, and the compassion of the free. The irony is that while we work for regime change in other countries, the regime we can legally change, and the things we can affect directly, is our own system. Instead of influencing others, perhaps we should first make sure we have influenced ourselves in a positive way.