37 Years

To most Americans, the date 23 October carries no special significance. It’s just a day on the calendar a little over a week before Halloween.

It should mean much more than that, but it seems few Americans remember what happened on another 23 October thirty-seven years ago.

On 23 October 1983, a Hezbollah jihadist terrorist made an “Islamikaze” attack on the United States Marine barracks set up at the Beirut International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon.

A Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU), now referred to as a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), had been assigned to a peacekeeping mission in the war-torn nation of Lebanon. Our Marines were asked to keep peace where there was no peace.

The Islamic Republic of Iran didn’t like the Marine presence in Lebanon and they trained and equipped their Hezbollah proxies to launch the attack on the Marines.

The terrorist drove a truck loaded with thousands of pounds of explosives into the terminal building and detonated a bomb in what has been estimated as the largest conventional explosion in history at the time.

By the time the smoke cleared the terminal building was nothing but twisted rubble and 241 American Marines, sailors and soldiers lay dead.

Contributing to the vulnerability of the Marine barracks were stupid rules of engagement. State Department sensibilities mandated that the Marines, as “peacekeepers” not have their weapons loaded. In fact, they weren’t even allowed to insert magazines into their weapons. So, when the Islamikaze bomber’s truck approached the barracks in the airport terminal building, there was no one to engage him to try to stop him.

The Marine Corps learned some lessons from this bombing. Never again were Marines sent into harm’s way with unloaded weapons.

Unfortunately, neither Iran nor their Hezbollah terrorist proxies ever paid a suitable price for the attack. To this day both remain enemies of the United States and freedom.

Hezbollah is now a terrorist organization of global reach with operations and personnel throughout the Middle East, in Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and, yes, here in the United States as well. Hezbollah is involved in the global drug trade in addition to its terrorist activities.

Iran is working on nuclear weapons and though they are the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism, just last weekend the United Nations arms embargo against them was lifted as part of the Obama-Biden nuclear deal. Iran will now have access to modern Russian and Chinese weapons thanks to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.