Beirut Bombing

BEIRUT BOMBING

BEIRUT BOMBING (23 October 1983). Arguably the greatest foreign policy disaster of President Ronald Reagan's administration occurred when a truck loaded with explosives crashed into U.S. marine barracks at Lebanon's Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. marines and sailors and wounding over 100 others. Eight years of sectarian strife, complicated by competing Syrian, Israeli, and Palestinian interests within Lebanon, had transformed the country into a beleaguered armed camp. Four months of U.S.-brokered negotiations in 1983 failed to find a settlement and coincided with a suicide car bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut on 18 April that killed sixty-three people. When Israel redeployed forces south of Beirut on September 3 and 4, heavy fighting exposed U.S. marines to enemy fire. The simultaneous suicide bombings by Muslim militants of U.S. and French peacekeeping headquarters on October 23 renewed Reagan's public determination to stay in Lebanon rather than risk losing American credibility. The collapse of Lebanon's Christian-led coalition government on 5 February 1984, and the routing of West Beirut's Christian militia two days later, forced Reagan to reconsider. By the time U.S. marines had been redeployed offshore on that date, a total of 257 service personnel had been pointlessly killed, according to Reagan administration critics. Even administration supporters admitted that U.S. peacekeeping forces had failed to appreciate the intractable character of Lebanon's bloody civil war.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hourani, Albert, and Nadim Shehadi, eds. The Lebanese in the World. London: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1991.

Mackey, Sandra. Lebanon: Death of a Nation. Chicago: Congdon and Weed, 1989.

Rabinovich, Itamar. The War for Lebanon, 1970–1983. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Bruce J. Evensen / c. w.

See also Arab Nations, Relations with ; Israel, Relations with ; Peacekeeping Missions .