October 23rd, 1983. Ronald Reagan was President of the United States.
What stood out then, particularly on television, was the toll of 241 dead at Marine BLT Barracks at Beirut Airport. Yet on the 30th Anniversary last week, in 2013, nothing appeared on television to commemorate those losses. Not a word on network news or the commentary shows.
These were revenge killings; for Muslims, the term "retaliation" is more appropriate. In all, four truck bombs killed 398 people to take revenge for months of Ronald Reagan using the offshore guns of the U.S. Navy to shell Lebanese villages. Those bombardments killed more than a thousand people, slaughtering Druze and Muslims indiscriminately. The technology for the bombs was provided by Iran. There, for the Iran-Iraq War, Reagan had reversed Jimmy Carter's Executive Order and taken to supplying material support for Saddam Hussein. This despite Saddam's use of nerve gas to kill tens of thousands of Iranians, including civilians.
"Teach them a lesson" from Reagan in the Oval Office had produced unanticipated consequences.
Corporate media avoid all mention of the Beirut, Lebanon "peacekeeping" invasion -- despite that the CBS program 60 Minutes is taking time tonight to replay the Benghazi attack and street riot that killed 4 on September 11, 2012.
No comparisons allowed.
Erasing the events of Lebanon 1983 also supports the long-term propaganda goal of portraying Ronald Reagan as a competent Commander in Chief. That is an important goal for conservative politics. Having Reagan seen as being good at everything is essential to claiming that he was a great president.
Early on, NBC had Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz, on Meet the Press. He claimed, fantastically, that Ronald Reagan was undefeated in his foreign military adventures. Shultz also stated a whopper of a lie: that the invasion of Grenada on October 25th of 1983 was "the first use of the American military overseas since Vietnam."
For those of us with connections to the Marine Corps that lie astonished. The Grenada distraction started 2 days after the Marine BLT Barracks was shattered. Shultz initiated what has become a concerted Republican effort to rewrite popular history: the disasters of Lebanon 1983 are erased.
Corporate media goes all in for Pearl Harbor Day when December 7th rolls around. That happened when a Democrat was in the White House.
Plainly, Republicans and their corporate allies would forget the military dead where it is politically convenient to forget them. Lying does not matter. They mislead their "Base" with gross lies, paranoid whining, and empty promises. They care for nothing but their own advancement.
Lie about the dead, ye superpatriots. IOKIYAR.
When Lebanon 1983 is mentioned, for such as resume material, the bombings are blamed on Hezbollah. That is one more lie. Another distraction. In 1983 the Arab militias in Lebanon were fragmented. There was no Hezbollah, not yet. Plus, the Iranians were the ones who supplied the detonation technology and management resource; we know who carried out the bombings and where they are mourned.
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I'm not going to put in pictures.
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More of what you will not learn from corporate media -- what happened, how and why our guys died, how Hezbollah was founded -- more coverage below the orange muffin.
