This year, an entirely new crop of articles has emerged on the Marine barracks bombing. Barry Rubin, the right-wing director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, criticized the Obama administration's statement on the anniversary of the bombing because it neglected to name Hezbollah, which did not yet exist in 1983, as the culprit, "under the guidance of Syria and Iran." Rubin is also upset that Hezbollah is no longer considered a terrorist group. But it does not engage in terrorism, so why should the United States consider it a terrorist group any more than it does the Irish Republican Army? Hezbollah under Hassan Nasrallah is a very different organization than the one that existed in Lebanon's chaotic 1980s.
Another egregious article was penned by fallen New York Times star Judith Miller, titled "War by other Names." Miller tries to draw a connection between the 1983 bombing and the September 11 attacks. "The attack offers several lessons, some of which are being resisted by those who favor compromise with militants who seek a worldwide Islamic caliphate and the imposition of a strict Islamic order on their fellow Muslim and non-Muslim citizens." First of all, no Shiite wants to restore the caliphate, which is primarily a Sunni concept. On a practical level, I've spent a lot of time with Islamist fighters in Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, and elsewhere, some of them linked to al Qaeda or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Nobody spoke about the caliphate or seemed to care about it.
Restoring the caliphate isn't really a motivation for most groups, not for the Taliban and not for al Qaeda, and definitely not for their recruits, who are usually responding to specific or general grievances. The Arab and Muslim worlds are too divided, nation-states and nationalism are too important, the Sunni-Shiite conflict is too serious to allow for them to take this seriously. Islamic metaphors or language are just a different discourse for older struggles, and those are typically more local and mundane, like foreign occupation, oppression, and support for Arab dictators.
Miller continues with more mistakes. "The first lesson is that by 1983, militants had already managed to overcome the historic divisions between Sunni and Shiite Islam. The Beirut attacks were a collaboration between Sunni Muslim Syria, a supposedly secular, leftist Baathist regime, and the Shiite Muslim Islamic Republic of Iran," Actually, the historic divide is much bloodier today, and more intense, than it was then. Sunnis were not fighting Shiites in the Lebanese civil war, but these days there have been Sunni-Shiite clashes here in Beirut, where I am writing from. The Iraqi civil war between Sunnis and Shiites is barely over, and the Shiite victory has made Sunni dictators in the region nervous, just as Hezbollah's victory over Israel has also struck fear into the hearts of these so-called "moderate" Sunni countries. Furthermore, it is wrong to view Syria in the 1980s as a Sunni Muslim state. This is the Syria that was massacring thousands of its own Sunni Islamists. Surely, Miller must remember that? It was happening practically at the same time. At the time of the Marine barracks bombing, the struggle was not about the Sunni-Shia rift. Today's sectarian strife, on the other hand, is very much a result of the American occupation of Iraq and sectarian agitation on the part of the Americans and the Saudis.
"Another lesson of Beirut is that terrorism works," Miller explains, because the Americans and others on the multinational peacekeeping force pulled out of Beirut following the attack. "[T]he United States abandoned Lebanon to its fate: years of civil war and the rise of Hezbollah as an entrenched political party that sponsors terror when violence suits its aims." However, it defies the imagination to believe that Lebanon's future would have been brighter if the Americans had remained as occupiers. Hezbollah is powerful because it is a successful model of resistance to Israeli and American hegemony and because it effectively serves its constituency, the largest group in Lebanon, nearly all of whom support it.
Bizarrely, Miller found hope in an official of the Saudi Interior Ministry -- an institution which tortures, executes, and holds people without charges or trial -- an official of the state which supports the very ideologies that lead to al Qaeda, the Taliban, hatred of Shiites, and the oppression of women. "Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon are both gaining ground," Miller also warned. This conflation of two national liberation movements, which have nothing in common with al Qaeda or the Taliban, is a dangerous and irresponsible misreading of the Middle East's political landscape.
There are indeed lessons to draw from the bombing 26 years ago: America should avoid meddling in civil wars it doesn't understand. An even simpler lesson is to leave people alone. Stop killing Muslims, and there won't be any Muslims who want to kill you.
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