On this day in 1983, 241 US service personnel — including 220 Marines and 21 other service personnel — were killed by an Iranian terrorist driving a truck bomb into a Marine compound in Beirut, Lebanon. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. pic.twitter.com/3hJsUIhZtk
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 23, 2018
Reagan’s Benghazi. Only difference is the Beirut bombing was worse and then his administration sold weapons to Iran. Which was Reagan’s Fast and Furious except bigger, and there was a massive coverup and everybody got pardoned.
— Eric Gyrne (@EGyrne) October 23, 2018
3 years later the future President of the NRA would be caught buying and selling arms to the same groups and countries responsible. https://t.co/SB97pv2lMW
— Zedward D Wood Junior (@Zeddary) October 23, 2018
Omnes Omnibus
Parents’ Weekend, my sophomore year.
Ladyraxterinok
The Marine killings no longer exist in GOPers’ memory. During Bill’s admin some US military personal were killed (in Africa?) The GOP went crazy, demanded he resign, etc. IIRC, NO ONE – certainly not M$M – even mentioned the marines who died on Reagan’s watch.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ladyraxterinok: Somalia.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: …and the Marines were already in Somalia when Bill took office.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: IIRC the fight was the 10th Mountain, a Ranger Battalion, and the Delta folks. It was an army thing.
Mike in DC
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled, brave, brave, brave Sir Ronald.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I sit corrected, but the point was the troops were already there, they were sent by HW.
Procopius
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It was Army personnel who were killed in Mogadishu. They went to the wrong block to try to kidnap a warlord. Don’t know whose idea it was to kidnap warlords. The Army (and the Marine Corps) should never be used for that kind of thing. The Army (and the Marine Corps and the Navy and the Air Force) should never have been used in the Global War on Terror™.
Jacel
Meanwhile, four US Special Forces troops were killed in Niger, an African country few knew we had troops in. And little has been said of that since.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongo_Tongo_ambush
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Ladyraxterinok: IOKIYAR
@Jacel: IOKIYAR
(lather, rinse, repeat for any other similar occurrences)
Mnemosyne
I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my older brothers (the one who died of aggressive lung cancer in 2015) was in the Marines at the time, in the Middle East, and had breakfast at that barracks before returning to the ship. The explosion happened after he was already onboard his ship, but we had no way of knowing that. My mother refused to answer the front door for two weeks because she did not want to see two uniformed Marines standing on our doorstep.
Eventually, my dad twisted a few arms and managed to get my mom a ship-to-shore call with my brother just to reassure her he was still alive. We’re still not totally sure how he managed it, it was through one of our members of Congress.
My brother said the other Marines mocked him because his mommy called, but I suspect they were a little envious, too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jacel: I doubt Donald even knew about those operations. He can’t care about lives. Not important to him.
Barb 2
After the bombing RayGun ordered an attack on an island in the Caribbean. Seems like the Russians built a runway or something on the island. Innocent people died in that invasion. The military got used by another dimwit GOP Prez.
p.a.
Didn’t Ronzo also have a battleship lob shells indiscriminately into Beirut after the barracks attack? Believe that is war crime.
@Barb 2: Not even Russians IIRC: The dreaded Cubans.
John Fremont
@Procopius: Another thing dropped down the memory hole was when the Reagan administration declared a War on Terrorism in 86 or 87 IIRC. Within a few years however the Reagan administration quietly reverted back to using the CIA and FBI and not as many military operations to thwart terrorist activities.
Ben Cisco
I spent some time on a ward at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center with one of the Marines wounded in that attack. Two weeks, that kid was pumped with enough painkillers to drop an elephant. It wasn’t enough. I’ll NEVER forget it, or forgive the B-Movie star for putting him in that spot and then turning his back on him.
stan
After the Beirut bombing, the Marines were withdrawn. Imagine a democratic president doing that – she’d be thrashed by the GOPers as a traitorous wuss.
And of course the only reason a place called “Lebanon” exists at all is so a small christian minority could rule over a few muslims in an artificially-created zone of the dismembered ottoman empire. There is no other basis for that place.
The “island in the caribbean’ was Grenada, a tiny place bothering nobody. Nineteen US personnel died there.