T wenty-eight years ago, one of the deadliest events in U.S. military history occurred. On the morning of October 23, 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon, a suicide bomber drove a yellow Mercedes truck into the U.S. Marine Corps base at Beirut International Airport. The truck was filled with 12,000 pounds of explosive materials. The explosion decimated the four-story military base. The attack killed a total of 241 U.S. service members: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel, and 3 Army soldiers. At the time of the attack, there were 1,600 Marines in Lebanon serving as neutral peacekeepers for ongoing tension in the Middle East. According to the FBI, the attack was (at the time) the biggest non-nuclear explosion since World War II. “For Americans, Beirut was a seminal moment on a timeline that led to the 9/11 attacks, Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond. It was a first shot in a clash with a militant, fundamentalist Islam – exemplified by groups...
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