"Since the Beirut attack, we and citizens of many countries have suffered more attacks at the hands of Hezbollah and other terrorists, backed by the regimes in Tehran and Damascus, which use terror and violence against innocent civilians," President Bush said in a statement released Friday.
Lebanon was in turmoil in the early 1980s. Civil war between Christian and Muslim militias raged. An Israeli occupation in the south continued. Politically motivated bombings were all too common. But the only suicide bombing had been one targeting the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut in 1981. It was attributed to the Shiite Muslim Islamic Dawa Party, an Iraqi exile faction backed by Iran that evolved into the group that now counts U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki as a member.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, April 20, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 45 words Type of Material: Correction
Beirut bombing memorial: An article in Saturday's Section A about the 25th anniversary of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut said the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks there occurred the following year. The attack on the Marines also occurred in 1983.
Marines entered Lebanon in 1982 as part of an international peacekeeping force. As the civil war heated up again, some accused Americans of taking the Christian side -- especially after U.S. warships began shelling Druze and Muslim positions in support of the weak Christian government.
Month after month the country drifted as the Israeli and Lebanese governments tried to hammer out a peace deal. Hostility mounted toward the Americans, who originally were welcomed as a buffer against the Israelis. The influence and capacity of Iranian-backed Shiite groups grew.
It was early afternoon when the bomber struck the embassy. He apparently drove an embassy vehicle believed to have been stolen a year earlier. Among the dead was the entire CIA station, including Robert Ames, the agency's top Middle East expert.
More violence was to follow. Marine encampments in Beirut were hit by rockets throughout the summer by Druze militias led by Walid Jumblatt, now one of Washington's closest allies. To avoid rocket fire, the Marines moved to a building east of the airport. It was struck Oct. 23, 1983, by a massive truck bomb. Minutes later, another bomb struck the building housing French paratroopers, killing 58.
Two months later, suspected Shiite radicals bombed the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait, as well as a residential compound for employees of the U.S. firm Raytheon.
In September 1984, a bomb struck the U.S. Embassy annex in Aukar, now the site of the heavily fortified embassy.
"It took me a long time to get over it," said Samir, a Lebanese employee of the embassy who survived the 1984 bombing. He had ended his studies in Southern California months earlier to take care of his mother after his father was killed in the French barracks bombing. He asked that his last name not be used because he still works for the embassy.
The bombings dramatically changed the architecture of U.S. diplomatic missions abroad and American diplomats' relations with locals.
"It was the beginning of the process of building fortress America overseas," said Bannerman. "We began to isolate ourselves from the community."
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daragahi@latimes.com
