It has been 25 years since this terrorist attack took place and killed 241 braves troops. People still wonder why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must fight and kill all of these Islamic terrorists!!
Posted : Wednesday Oct 22, 2008 10:53:35 EDT
Every October, Judith Young makes a solemn trip from her home in southern New Jersey to Jacksonville, N.C., to honor her late son, Sgt. Jeffrey D. Young.
Along the way, she wonders about the life her son might have lived: A wife, possibly children and maybe a full career in the Corps he loved to serve.
“He loved jumping out of airplanes and rappelling down buildings, but I have no idea what he would have done,” she said. “Who knows? He was only 22.”
Young normally mourns alongside a close group of friends she’s made honoring her son’s memory, but this year there likely will be more attention on the memorials held at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and elsewhere for the 241 troops — all but 21 were Marines — killed in the Oct. 23, 1983, bombing of the Beirut barracks.
The memorials mark 25 years since a truck bomb inflicted the greatest loss of Marine life since the battle of Iwo Jima and, for many, ushered in the dawn of the modern terrorist era. It left 109 children without fathers, and scores of families with a lifetime of mourning.
The anniversary will provide many not directly impacted by the bombing with an opportunity to reflect on a tragedy some say was too quickly forgotten.
“It was forgotten two weeks after it happened,” Young said. “No one really knows or understands what happened in Beirut anymore.”
But not everyone has forgotten.
Read the entire story here.
2 comments:
"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it,"
(George Santayana)
I'm afraid that very few remember...
Had my son not chosen to become a Marine, I would not know the significance of this day. It was a tragic story to hear as a 21 year old, but I forgot about it very quickly.
I have visited the Beirut, and the ("coincidentally" located nearby,) 911 memorials not far from the main gates of CLNC twice now. I will never forget this date again. The Marine Corps Times article sums it all up well. 10/23/83 was the beginning of what we have been dealing with ever since, the war against radical Islam.
I was able to get this anniversary date discussed on our local talk radio station today, by our really excellent hosts, by sending them the Marine Corps Times article yesterday. I am on a mission. We have to know history and remember it, and think things through all the way. Even Reagan dropped the ball on that... We have to stop being so caught up in our personal busyness that we don't pay attention to these kind of things.
My younger sons have seen the 9/11 memorial, in Jax, sitting right next to the Beirut memorial. They are starting to understand, and put it together (something that they will never learn at school,) and they will remember this date from now on. I know that their older brother always will!
Thanks for your blog on this!
Kathy Benton
Gainesville,
FL
Reagan was wrong on this. A proper reaction would have been any number of BLU-82s dumped out the back of a horde of C-130s.
BZ
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