By now all the cheer leaders are drooling over the fact that Israel has finally attacked Iran after weeks and weeks of anticipation.

I would like to point out the there are 100 or so US troops stationed in Israel and now they may be painted with a target on their backs.

Why does this matter?

If you are a child of social media the date will mean nothing to you but it you are a bit older and can remember 1982 then you will understand….

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, which was the beginning of an occupation that would not end completely until 2000. That Israeli invasion of Lebanon, like the current one, was directly related to the same Israeli policy of bashing and subjugating the Palestinians. Israel’s chief objective in 1982 was to destroy the capabilities, resident in Lebanon at the time, of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and to drive the PLO out of the Levant. Israel also sought to tip the balance of forces within Lebanon — which had already been engulfed in civil war — toward ones partial to Israel.

The Israeli invasion and occupation substantially increased the suffering of Lebanese as well as Palestinian refugees there. One of the most horrifying low points was the massacre in September 1982 at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Phalange militiamen slaughtered an estimated 3,000 civilians while the Phalange’s ally, the Israel Defense Forces, fired illuminating flares so that the killing could continue through the night.

A couple of weeks earlier, the United States under the Reagan administration had agreed to deploy U.S. Marines, alongside small military contingents from France, Britain, and Italy, as part of a multinational force in Lebanon. At least on the face of it, this deployment had a noble peacekeeping mission of quelling the violence in Lebanon. But Lebanese and other observers had reason to perceive the U.S. action as a weighing in on the side of Israel and the internal political forces it favored.

Besides, as with other deployments of U.S. military personnel to already dangerous places, the lethal logic of force protection kicked in, and peacekeeping morphed into offensive action. President Reagan authorized “aggressive self-defense” against hostile forces that posed a threat to the Marines, with those same hostile forces also being adversaries of Israel and its Lebanese militia allies. The U.S. engagement on the ground was supported by naval gunfire, which would later include the battleship New Jerseyfiring 16-inch shells at targets in the mountains near Beirut.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/marine-barracks-bombing-in-beirut/

You see our adventurism has a good chance of turning around and biting us on the ass.

I hope there is not a repeat of Lebanon….but do not hold your breath.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”