It was not the first time that Lebanon had asked the United States for help. On July 15, 1958, 1,700 Marines arrived in Beirut ready for combat as hostility erupted between Christians and Muslims. However, unlike 1958, the fighting of the 1980s was much more violent, and entrenched war had already been raging for over five years.

While most Lebanese welcomed the foreign peacekeepers, many opposed them and saw them as a Western colonial interference in Muslim-majority countries.

Then, on Oct. 23, 1983, witnesses reported seeing a yellow Mercedes truck speeding toward the barracks that housed the American service members. It carried 10 thousand pounds of explosives, and the force of the explosion flattened the building, killing 220 Marines, 18 U.S. Navy sailors, and 3 U.S. Army soldiers.

Minutes later, a similar attack took place in the French quarter, resulting in the deaths of 58 French paratroopers.

To this day, this event remains the deadliest single-day attack for the United States Marine Corps since the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.

The Islamic Jihad, a pro-Iranian Shiite group, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Gray, a two-star general, was alerted about the attacks just after midnight. The Beirut barracks bombing was a personal affair for Gray; his troops were in Lebanon, and he had visited them just months before the attack.

After the bombing, Gray attended over 100 funerals of the service members killed. He also offered his resignation over the incident – the only senior officer to do so. His request was declined.

One could draw many parallels between the Beirut barracks bombing of 1983 and current events.

In August 1982, President Ronald Reagan expressed his grave concern over Israel’s conduct in Lebanon and warned Israel about using American weaponry offensively. In a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Reagan described Israel’s siege of Beirut as a “holocaust.”

...continued