October 2008
25 Years Ago: The 1983 Beirut Bombing: Who Did It and How It Has Affected History
By CWO-4 Randy Gaddo, USMC (Ret)
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Twenty-five years after what many now believe was the first shot fired in the global war on terrorism (GWOT), new information is coming to light about exactly who did it, why it was done and how it impacted America’s future. It was the highest loss of life for U.S. Marines in a single day since Iwo Jima.
For the FBI, it was the largest non-nuclear explosion they’d ever investigated. It was a defining event for Marines, sailors and soldiers who survived. It was the first major operation against Americans for Hezbollah and its Iranian backers and would establish the terrorist tactics that paved the path to Sept. 11. The 23 Oct. 1983 bombing of the U.S. military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, was an unimaginable crime against humanity and a harbinger of the coming GWOT.
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| Coming in for a closer look, the “unimaginable crime against humanity” is even more evident. (Photo by SSgt Randy Gaddo) |
The U.S. Marine sentry in Beirut on 23 Oct. 1983 frantically snapped a magazine into his M16A1 service rifle, locked and loaded, hastily took aim and squeezed off passing rounds at the speeding 19-ton truck. He saw the driver clearly for a split second.
The driver was a young Middle Eastern man; court documents later would reveal he was an Iranian named Ismalal Ascari. In testimony his dark eyes were described as dazed-looking and staring straight ahead. Some speculate he may have been on drugs. He stiff-armed the steering wheel, and he was smiling.
The suicidal fanatic smiled as he smashed through perimeter barriers, overran the sentry’s position, crashed through another guard post and drove the truck into the atrium of the four-story-tall barracks that was home to about 400 U.S. “Peacekeepers.”
No sooner had the truck stopped before it detonated, creating what FBI investigators later would describe as the largest non-nuclear blast that they ever had studied.
Three soldiers, 18 sailors and 220 Marines died, and dozens more were trapped in the debris, many severely injured. Some of those died months or years after the bombing. Most of those who survived still carry the mental and/or physical scars today.
Marines under the flag of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit had been sent to Lebanon as peacekeepers. They first went ashore in early 1982 to oversee evacuation of about 15,000 armed combatants of Yassar Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. Shortly after that, they went back in at the request of the Lebanese government as part of a multinational peacekeeping force after the Lebanese president was assassinated.
Thousands of Marines, sailors and soldiers would rotate in and out of Lebanon for that mission between 1982 and 1984. During that time, 270 would die; hundreds would be injured. All this was in the name of peace.
That the driver smiled as he committed the heinous crime against humanity was shocking, perplexing and confusing at the time. Now, 25 years later, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear why he smiled.
In that split second, the Marine sentry saw the face of the new menacing enemy—Islamic extremists. They would oppose the free world and define the lives of the next several generations. Many now believe this attack on Americans was the Islamic extremists’ first real volley in the GWOT.
Who was the driver, and for whom did he work? What organization was behind him, and what was its goal? Why would anyone deliberately murder and maim so many men—operating as peacekeepers under peacetime and highly restrictive rules of engagement—while they slept on a Sunday morning?
The answers are as complicated and entangled as the Middle East itself. The answers are rooted in history thousands of years old, dating back to prebiblical times. This history has formed a myriad of political, religious and ethnic beliefs and relationships of the dozens of varying governments, militaries, militias, sects and fringe groups involved in the Middle East. All these players have their own set of values and try to impose them on others who don’t necessarily want them.
