Matthew Levitt recounts Iran's history of terror sponsorship:
Thirty years ago today, on Oct. 23, 1983, a delivery van filled with 18,000 pounds of explosives slammed into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Seconds later, another car bomb hit a French military building four miles away. A total of 241 American and 58 French soldiers lost their lives, all members of the Multi-National Forces in Lebanon.
The attack on the Marine barracks was not only the single-largest nonnuclear explosion since World War II, it was also the deadliest terrorist attack against Americans up to that time. [Emphasis mine.]
Was the Marine barracks attack, heinous as it unquestionably was, really "terrorism"? By definition, the barracks housed military service members, not civilians.
If attacks on military targets stationed overseas in a war zone constitute terrorism, then the word essentially has no meaning. Worse, America would then be guilty of terrorism on a scale that is orders of magnitude more severe than anything Iran has done, given the number of military targets the U.S. has blown up since 1983.
(AP Photo)
