Bush's Beirut?

It seems impossible to me that the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut was 20 years ago, today. 1983 was the year I graduated from West Point and headed out into the Army. The bombing got all of us in the military thinking about where we were going, about our politicians' commitment to the wise use of the military and, of course, about force protection.

Although that event led directly to our withdrawal from Beirut, it seems that perhaps certain lessons weren't learned by the politicians. I wonder, like everyone on the left side of the blogosphere, whether aWol will attend ceremonies honoring the marines killed twenty years ago. But even more importantly, I wonder if - still - the lessons of Beirut have been forgotten.

There are more soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan than there were in Beirut and all of Lebanon in 1983, and there have been no single, large bombings targeted at U.S. soldiers, but the death toll so far there has been much higher. The fact that it's happening one or two deaths at a time doesn't change the basic question: is our government allowing the military to do all it can to protect our soldiers?

The situation is not strictly analogous, I know. But the concern is the same. Have we learned our history lessons? BushCo. seems incapable of learning any deep lessons from history; can they learn even the most basic?

As we see the memorials to our Marines today, contrast that to the caskets arriving one or two at a time at Dover Air Force Base (not that we are allowed to see even those anymore...). Once again our men and women in uniform are deployed in a place where the population has a deep distrust and hatred for American policies without - perhaps - the proper levels of force protection.

Will we learn our lessons this time?