Motivation
According to Robert Fisk, a major motivation for the bombing was the ill will generated by the Multinational Force (MNF) among Lebanese Muslims, especially ShiĘża living in the slums of West Beirut and around the airport where the Marines were headquartered, as they saw the MNF siding with the Maronite Catholics in their domination of Lebanon. Muslim feelings against the American presence were "exacerbated when missiles lobbed by the U.S. Sixth Fleet hit innocent by-standers in the Druze-dominated Shuf mountains." There was a growing feeling of frustration inside the Muslim and Druze community in Lebanon with US direct backing of Israel in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and other pro-Israeli factions within Lebanon. These factions had been responsible for multiple attacks committed against the Muslim and Druze Lebanese population.
Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty, the commander of the marines in Beirut during the incident, has said that the Marine and the French headquarters were targeted primarily because of "who we were and what we represented;" and that,
It is noteworthy that the United States provided direct naval gunfire support -- which I strongly opposed -- for a week to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq-al-Garb on September 19 and that the French conducted an air strike on September 23 in the Bekaa Valley. American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality and I stated to my staff at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.
Some authors, including Thomas Friedman point to the use of this naval gunfire as the beginning point of the U.S. forces being seen as participants in the civil war rather than peace keepers and opening them up to retaliation.
Some analysts believe the Islamic Republic of Iran was heavily involved and that a major factor leading it to participate in the attacks on the barracks was America's support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War and its extending of $2.5 billion in trade credit to Iraq while halting the shipments of arms to Iran. A few weeks before the bombing, Iran warned that providing armaments to Iran's enemies would provoke retaliatory punishment.
Read more about this topic: 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing
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