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Beirut Remembered
20-years ago today, October 23, 1983, Hezbollah suicide bombers killed more than 300 American and French troops on peace-keeping duty in Beirut, Lebanon. It was our first experience with a suicide bomber. The International troops were in Beirut to stop the fighting between Muslim and Christian forces trying to gain control of the country. Most of the Americans killed were Marines and sailors from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The Corps remembers them with a memorial aboard the base. After the blast, President Reagan decided that our presence in Lebanon wasn't worth the loss of life - much as President Clinton decided ten years later in Mogadishu. The result was the present Islamofascist view that the U.S. can be deterred by suicide bombers. To date, the U.S. has lost 264 soldiers to hostile fire in the Iraq war, only 23 more than we lost on one morning in 1983. Update - late in the day, CNN files a story. And Fox adds a story from today's memorial service.
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