As we showed in Part 2, a nation being attacked by a neighbor armed with the best modern weapons available from the US and France, saddled with a military disabled by an embargo blocking its acquisition of spare parts and desperately sending untrained teenagers into battle as cannon fodder in “human waves”, might well and truly have believed that it faced an “existential threat”.
In fact, after the Iraq invasion in 1980 that was exactly the plight of the new Iranian regime.
It should therefore also not come as a surprise that imperiled in this manner, Iran might also have sought to lash out with whatever means remained at its disposal. And we mean especially against that same intruder in its geographic neighborhood that had also stationed several hundred US Marines in the middle of a Lebanese civil war, which was none of Washington’s business.
That is to say, the attack on the lethally armed US Marines in the Beirut barracks in September 1983 didn’t flow from Iran’s hatred of America’s freedoms way over here; it was in retaliation for Washington’s help to Saddam Hussein slaughtering their barely armed teenage conscripts way over there in their own backyard.
And, yes, we are talking about Washington’s utterly gratuitous 1980s alliance with the very one and same Saddam Hussein, who swung from the end of an American rope 20 years later. Of course, by then he too was deemed an inconvenience by the neocons – Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George Dubya Bush – who were then ruling the national security roost in Washington.
So context and history do make a difference. The truth is, the MAGA propagandists who always open their “Iran’s 47-Years War on America” Big Lie by citing the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing have no clue about how, why and when it happened.
We do. We were there as a member of the NSC (national security council) and saw it all up close and personal. Needless to say, our viewing was akin to the proverbial visit to the sausage factory: That is, it was unappetizing in the extreme.
As it happened, the errors that led to the stationing of Marines in Beirut and the tragic deaths of 181 soldiers in September 1983 stemmed from the same old, same old. That is, the imperatives of Empire and the utterly mistaken notion that America needed allies in the Middle East and had to engage in active policing of the region in the name of national security.
Alas, that was barking tommyrot then and in the hindsight of history is even more risible today. After all, 1983 marked the fading hours of the Soviet Empire. The latter was collapsing from the sheer dead-weight of communism internally – not anything externally that the far-flung cold war Empire Washington had concocted was doing to “contain” the Soviet Union via NATO in Europe or other alliances and bases in the middle east and anywhere else around the planet.
After all, world communism was on the march alright – straight into the dustbin of history, to use one of Karl Marx’s more felicitous phrases.
The fact is, by the early 1980s Washington had become the seat of a veritable Warfare State. Armed to the teeth and in possession of military bases, Naval armadas and globally dispatchable air and land forces, there were literally hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats at DOD, State, USAID, Radio Free Europe and its clones who drew their paychecks and self-importance from manning the Empire.
Likewise, there were also armies of their counterparts on Congressional committees and in the K-street corridors chock-a-bloc full of military-industrial complex lobbyists and money-bag dispensers of campaign cash. And all of these bureaucrats, apparatchiks, politicians and grifters functioned on the premise that the American Empire was the natural order of things and the indispensable lynch-pin of America’s Homeland Security.
Alas, that was a Big Lie then and its persistence four decades later is its hideous legacy – the fetid fruit of which gave rise to Trump’s utterly insane war on Iran, and thereby on the Persian Gulf at large and the vital arteries of global commerce which are fueled from it.
So we need to return to the Marine Barracks Bombing, which almost as much as the 444-day Embassy Hostage Ordeal gave rise to Evil Iran narrative that led to the current disaster.
Needless to say, at the time in 1982-1983 when this all got underway we were too busy fighting for budget cuts and resisting the Big Spenders on Capitol Hill – along with their allies who had finagled there way into the Reagan Administration Cabinet and agencies – to take close note of the unfolding crisis in Lebanon.
When we did catch up with the details, however, the NSC was already in the midst of negotiations led by the State Department designed to separate the warring factions in Lebanon. This especially included finding cover for the invading Israeli Army in south Lebanon and arranging safe passage for tens of thousands of PLO operatives from their camps there to Tunisia and other places removed from the Lebanese cauldron.
In short order, of course, the mainly US manned Multinational Peacekeeping Force that had been dropped into Beiruit was caught up in the aftermath of a vicious genocidal attack on the the Palastinain refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila, followed by the counterattack in the Marine Barracks which occurred a few weeks later.
But here’s the thing. In virtually all of the urgent NSC discussions which perforce transpired on nearly a daily basis it was never explained as to how America’s Homeland security would be enhanced by getting in the middle of this new Israeli spat with its neighbor to the north. Nor was there much understanding of the background in terms of Lebanon’s decades-old, bitterly fragmented polity along sectarian lines, the Lebanese civil war after 1975 and the brutal Israeli invasion lead by hardliner General Sharon in 1982.
As the crisis heated up, needless to say, we began to wonder about why we were there at all. So we took the trouble to get a series of private briefings from CIA analysts with regards to these matters. We recall these briefings quite vividly because they showed that it was well understood down in the bowels of the national security apparatus even then that the Reagan Administration was plunging into a veritable hornets nest of historical religious, political and ethnic animosities that were almost beyond comprehension.
Alas, the predicates of Empire simply over-ruled any influence of plain facts and common sense. That is, the predicate was that America needed to assist its ally, Israel, even as it attempted to stabilize the surrounding region, which was afire with essentially irrelevant conflict.
By contrast, had Washington followed the wise advice of the great Senator from Ohio, Robert Taft, at the outset of the Cold War in the late 1940s and 1950s and repaired to a Fortress America defense backed by an invincible nuclear deterrent a far different scenario would have ensued. The administration of Ronald Reagan in 1982 simply would not have been in the business of aiding Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran or plunging American servicemen into a red hot cauldron of armed conflict in Southern Beirut.
Stated differently, even the NSC of Ronald Reagan was blinded by the imperatives of Empire. Accordingly, in the aftermath of the barracks bombing the NSC deliberations reached a low point of absurdity, which is a reminder of why a global empire should not be run from the banks of the Potomac.
To wit, the hawks on the NSC wanted to retaliate for the bombing, but had only vague intel that the perpetrators had evacuated to the Chouf Mountains that surrounded Beirut. These warhawks, of course, wanted to send in a huge increase in US forces to hunt the perpetrators down and kill them all.
As it happened, however, Ronald Reagan had not forgotten the lessons of LBJ’s disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965 after an equivalent setback, and insisted that there must be another way and that less risky options be considered.
And at that point, a Keystone Cops moment actually ensued, when it was suggested during a NSC meeting in the Cabinet Room that perhaps the perpetrators in the Chouf Mountains could be hit by the big guns on the battleship New Jersey, which was stationed near the Beirut harbor. In that context, of course, the question immediately arose as to the range of the big guns on the the battleship.
A military aide sitting in the row of chairs along the wall of the Cabinet Room quickly supplied an answer: “35 miles plus or minus”. At that, a huge map of the Beirut region was rolled out on the Cabinet table, where America’s Secretary of State sitting next to President Reagan already had one finger on the Beirut harbor and another on the Chouf mountains. Holding his fingers up in the air to mark the coordinates, he then pronounced after testing his fingers’ span against the “scale of miles” on the map that it was his conclusion that the bad guys could be hit by the big guns on the New Jersey. Accordingly, no boots on the ground would be necessary to extract revenge for the bombing!
As it happened, some heavy duty shelling occurred for a limited period of time, but in his wisdom Ronald Reagan decided to “reposition” the remaining US Marines to a safer location in the deep Mediterranean. So at least that incipient “Forever War” was avoided.
But it was a close call that never should have even been the agenda for an emergency NSC meeting because the America’s Homeland security was not engaged in any way whatsoever in either Beirut or on Saddam’s side on the battlefields in the Iranian deserts and mountains. Indeed, as summarized below, this opening chapter of the Iran’s alleged “47-Year War on America should never, ever have occurred.
To understand this, we needs go back to the reasons for the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in southern Lebanon during the 1970s and early 1980s. The latter was a pivotal factor in escalating tensions that ultimately drew in Washington mediations and the peacekeeping force including the US Marines, which, in turn, set the stage for Iranian retaliation amid the broader Iran-Iraq War.
As it happened, the PLO’s establishment in Lebanon transformed the region into a volatile front line. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, where Israel decisively defeated Arab coalitions and occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and other territories, Palestinian nationalism surged. The PLO, founded in 1964 under Yasser Arafat’s leadership from 1969, became the umbrella organization for various Palestinian factions seeking to liberate Palestine through armed struggle.
However, internal Arab politics complicated their operations. The PLO originally operated out of Jordan, but its growing military presence led to Black September in 1970. During the ensuing civil war, King Hussein’s forces expelled PLO fighters, killing thousands and forcing survivors to flee.
Many relocated to Lebanon, where existing Palestinian refugee camps – established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War – provided a ready base. Lebanon, however, with its fragile sectarian balance codified in the 1943 National Pact, was ill-equipped to handle this influx, to employ an understatement.
Illustrative of the long-arm of history, the 1943 pact had allocated power based on a 1932 census: Maronite Christians held the presidency, Sunni Muslims the premiership, and Shia Muslims the speakership of parliament.
By the 1970s, however, demographic shifts favored Muslims, particularly Shias which populated the south of the country, thereby straining the confessional system. But it was the PLO’s arrival that exacerbated the the sectarian tensions to the breaking point, especially after it established a “state within a state” in southern Lebanon, known as “Fatahland”.
This designation was reference to Arafat’s Fatah faction. Refugee camps like Rashidieh and Sabra became militarized hubs, housing not just civilians but PLO training facilities, arms depots, and launch sites for cross-border attacks into Israel.
From these camps, PLO fedayeen (guerrillas) conducted raids, rocket attacks and infiltrations targeting Israeli civilians and military outposts. These actions, in turn, provoked Israeli retaliations and often indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery bombardments on Lebanese villages and camps. The resulting large-scale civilian casualties fueled resentment among locals, particularly Shias who were the dominant population of southern Lebanon and who bore the brunt of the Israeli retaliations.
The PLO’s presence also intertwined with Lebanon’s internal divisions. In 1969, the Cairo Agreement, brokered by Egypt’s Nasser, granted PLO autonomy in 16 refugee camps, allowing them to bear arms and conduct operations against Israel, provided they respected Lebanese sovereignty.
However, the PLO frequently violated these rules, clashing with Lebanese forces and Christian militias like the Phalange, founded by Pierre Gemayel in 1936 as a Maronite paramilitary.
Christians viewed the PLO as a threat to their dominance, while leftist Muslim and Druze factions allied with the PLO against the status quo. So by the mid-1970s, southern Lebanon was a veritable powder keg.
The PLO’s Katyusha rocket barrages into northern Israel (Galilee) disrupted life there, prompting evacuations and economic hardship. So Israel responded with operations like the 1973 Verdun raid in Beirut, killing large numbers of PLO leaders.
This cycle continued to intensify, contributing to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. In April of that year Phalangists ambushed a bus in Ain al-Rummaneh, killing 27 Palestinians, sparking widespread fighting. The PLO sided with the leftist National Movement against Christian forces, further entrenching their role.
The camps symbolized Palestinian resilience but also became symbols of occupation for the Lebanese. Shias, traditionally marginalized, initially sympathized but grew resentful as PLO dominance led to lawlessness, extortion, and collateral damage from Israeli reprisals.
By 1978, Israel launched Operation Litani, invading southern Lebanon up to the Litani River to create a buffer zone, displacing 100,000–250,000 and killing hundreds. In response, the PLO withdrew temporarily but returned and rebuilt its fortifications.
This period highlighted the PLO’s dual role: As liberators for Palestinians and destabilizers for Lebanon. Their camps hosted up to 10,000 fighters by 1982, launching attacks that killed dozens in Israel annually.
In turn, this set the stage for Israel’s 1982 invasion, aimed at eradicating the PLO threat once and for all. The Israeli invasion was code-named Operation Peace for Galilee and was a direct response to the PLO’s entrenched presence in the south, but it evolved into a broader campaign under Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s ambitious vision.
Launched in June 1982 it marked Israel’s second major incursion into Lebanon, following 1978’s Operation Litani, and aimed to eliminate PLO infrastructure, expel Syrian forces, and install a pro-Israeli government. In this context, Sharon, a hawkish general turned politician, had long advocated invading Lebanon to crush the PLO and reshape the region.
He envisioned a “new order” where Bashir Gemayel, the Christian Phalange leader, would become Lebanon’s president, signing a peace treaty with Israel, and Syrian influence would be curtailed.
The operation began with airstrikes on PLO targets in Beirut and southern Lebanon, followed by a ground invasion involving three divisions: one along the coast to Sidon and Beirut, another through central Lebanon to the Beirut-Damascus highway, and a third engaging Syrians in the Bekaa Valley.
Officially, the goal was a 40-km buffer zone to push PLO rockets out of range of northern Israel, but Sharon expanded it without full cabinet approval, advancing all the way to Beirut by June.
As it unfolded, the Israeli invasion overwhelmed PLO defenses. In southern camps like Rashidieh and Tyre, fedayeen resisted fiercely but were outgunned. Israel captured vast PLO arms caches, including tanks and artillery, thereby attempting to liquidate the “state within a state”.
Civilian casualties were necessarily high given the dense urban environments in which these battles were conducted. Estimates at the time suggested 10,000–20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians died, many in bombings of densely populated areas. The siege of Beirut, from June to August 1982, involved relentless shelling and the cutting off water and electricity, leading to thousands more deaths.
Sharon’s strategy included allying with Christian militias, particularly the Phalange, to avoid urban combat in Beirut. This alliance was rooted in shared anti-PLO sentiments. Israel also clashed with Syrian forces, destroying 82–86 Syrian aircraft in the Bekaa air battles and advancing against Syrian troops.
By mid-June 1982, Israel controlled southern Lebanon and besieged West Beirut, where 6,000–9,000 PLO fighters were trapped. Internationally, the invasion drew condemnation. So US policy under President Reagan initially supported Israel, but grew concerned as the civilian death toll mounted into the tens of thousands. At length, President Reagan even halted F-16 deliveries and pushed hard on Israel for a ceasefire.
The ensuing UN resolutions demanded Israeli withdrawal, but the latter ignored them as usual. At length, as amplified below, the PLO evacuation to Tunisia was completed in August 1982 under multinational supervision.
In that narrow sense, the Israeli invasion achieved it short-term goal. However, it failed in any reasonable longer-term sense: There was no peace treaty with Lebanon and the widespread death and destruction spurred Hezbollah’s rise among Shias resentful of the Israeli occupation.
Moreover, the war deepened Lebanon’s divisions, setting up the conditions for even more traumatic violence thereafter. We are referring to the massacres by the Christian Phalange at theSabra and Shatila refugees camps, which occurred on September 16–18, 1982. These travesties were among the darkest chapters of the Lebanon War, perpetrated by Christian Phalange militiamen with Israeli complicity.
These events involved the killing of 1,500–3,500 civilians (mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias) and were ostensibly what prompted the deployment of multinational forces, including U.S. Marines, to stabilize Beirut. Again, however, in all the deliberations at the NSC there was never any showing that essentially pulling Israels irons out of the fire of international condemnation had any bearing whatsoever on the America’s Homeland security from sea-to-shinning-sea.
In any event, following the PLO’s evacuation, Israel occupied West Beirut on September 15, violating agreements with both the US and Lebanese government. This move came after the assassination of President-elect Bashir Gemayel on September 14 by a Syrian agent – a further reminder of why the US should not have been involved in this regional hornets nest.
President Gemayel was the hereditary Christian Phalange leader and Israeli ally. His death enraged Phalangists, who blamed Palestinians despite no direct PLO link.
So Sharon authorized Phalange entry into Sabra neighborhood and Shatila camp to “mop up” remaining PLO fighters, estimated at 200. Israeli forces surrounded the area, illuminated it with flares, and prevented escapes. Phalangists then entered on September 16, unleashing a 36–48 hour rampage of rape, mutilation, and murder. Victims included women, children, and elderly; bodies were bulldozed into mass graves.
The massacres purportedly avenged Gemayel’s death and earlier Phalange losses. But they were genocidal in intent and effect, targeting Palestinians as a group. Israeli officials knew of the killings by evening of the first day but delayed intervention until several days later. A subsequent Israeli investigation Commission later found Sharon indirectly responsible, recommending his removal.
Needless to say, global outrage ensued, followed by UN condemnation and the return of the peacekeeping forces which had been withdrawn weeks earlier. The massacres highlighted the war’s brutality and provided the reason for international peacekeepers to protect Palestinians and stabilize Lebanon.
As it had transpired, the US manned peacekeeping force had been deployed to oversee PLO evacuation to Tunisia and other North African countries. Negotiated by the State Department, the August 1982 agreement required the aforementioned PLO withdrawal from Beirut under MNF supervision to prevent further bloodshed.
From August 21 to September 1, 1982 upwards of 14,400 PLO fighters and officials had been evacuated by sea and land to Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria. Arafat departed for Greece, then Tunisia, marking the end of PLO’s Lebanese “state within a state.”
The MNF, which included 800 U.S. Marines from the 32nd Marine Amphibious Unit, had landed August 25 to secure the port and ensure safe passage. With its mission complete by September 10, the MNF withdrew, but Gemayel’s assassination and subsequent massacres prompted re-deployment on September 29.
Now, the goal shifted to stabilizing Beirut, supporting the Lebanese government, and training the army. Again, how that enhanced the homeland security of America by one iota was never stated.
Nevertheless, diverse Lebanese groups opposing Israel’s continued occupation of southern Lebanon, which bred resistance from diverse groups: Druze, Shias, Sunnis, and leftover Palestinians – all of which united against foreign presence despite internal rifts.
The Druze led by Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) controlled the Chouf Mountains. Initially neutral, they clashed with Israelis and Christians post-1982, viewing occupation as a threat to Lebanon’s autonomy. In 1983, Druze forces defeated Phalangists in the Chouf and took control of the region, displacing 250,000 Christians.
Shias, Lebanon’s largest sect by the 1980s, initially welcomed Israelis for ousting PLO but turned hostile due to prolonged occupation and abuses. Amal, led by Nabih Berri, represented moderate Shias, fighting PLO remnants and Israelis.
But radical Shia factions broke away from Am and formed Hezbollah in 1982, and backed by Iran began conducting suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks. Sunnis in Sidon and Tripoli opposed occupation, aligning with the leftist coalition.
These groups’ resistance prolonged the conflict, drawing in the MNF as increasingly perceived to be pro-Israel. In any event, as indicated above the MNF and US Marines returned in late September 1982 to protect civilians post-massacre and support Gemayel’s government.
By 1983, 1,200 Marines guarded Beirut airport, part of a 5,000-strong force. The mission shifted from evacuation to peacekeeping amid the civil war factions. However, the MNF lost neutrality by supporting the Lebanese Army against Druze and Shia militias, using naval gunfire. This made them targets for Iranian-backed groups.
At this very juncture, however, Washington tiled toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq toprevent Iranian victory. After Iran’s 1979 Revolution and hostage crisis, President Reagan removed Iraq from terrorism list in 1982, providing intelligence, credits ($2.5 billion by 1983), and dual-use tech. Fearing Iranian export of revolution, U.S. shared satellite imagery and allowed arms sales to Iraq.
At the end of the day, elements of the the imperiled government in Tehran orchestrated the October 23, 1983, bombing via Hezbollah precursor Islamic Jihad.
And yet and yet. Those marines should never have been there because their ever changing mission was always in service to Empire, never to the benefit of America’s Homeland security.
David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.
