Week 13
In 1983, a pro-Iranian group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Organization (later known as Hezbollah) detonated a suicide bomb next to the U.S. embassy, killing 63 people. It wasn’t the first shot fired in the war with Islamic jihadists, but it was a harbinger of the broader war to come. How could America defeat an enemy with no sovereign borders, who wore no nation’s uniform, and who targeted civilians and military alike? It was a question some leaders would try to ignore, and others would have to face:
An attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut killed 307 people: 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel, and 6 civilians. American troops increasingly became targets of opportunity as they deployed all over the world in limited engagement, peace-keeping missions: (Note: mute audio at the 1:40 timestamp to avoid a brief, mild profanity)
Iraq invades Kuwait, and the United States develops what becomes known as the Powell Doctrine — a list of questions that require affirmative answers before military action is taken. In the case of Saddam Hussein, the answers were affirmative:
The Gulf War debuted the aircraft that was to dominate the ground war capabilities of every other nation — the AH-64 Apache:
For the first time in war, stealth aircraft are deployed, and with astonishing success:
The fourth-largest army in the world is routed in three days. The overwhelming might of U.S. and allied forces showed just how fast a conventional war could be won, causing America’s enemies to revisit other means of fighting them.
A U.S. stealth fighter is shot down during the NATO air war in Yugoslavia. It crashed largely intact, giving former Soviet states a prize in the form of new intelligence into stealth technology:
There are only sixteen Americans with air-to-air kills since the Vietnam War. Mike Shower has two of them (maybe only one and a half if you ask some people). Also, a discussion of why the F-22 is still the best fighter we’ve ever made, and why it’s no longer around:
Here we take a bit of a rabbit trail into the science of radar…and how to beat it:
The world witnesses the first act of Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil, at the World Trade Center in New York City. It would be attacked again eight years later:
The Battle of Mogadishu, otherwise known as Black Hawk Down:
American special forces were deployed to Somalia in support of a United Nations peace-keeping mission. When two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in the city of Mogadishu, American troops — outnumbered 25-1 — were forced to fend off heavily-armed Somalia militia:
Two American Rangers revisited Mogadishu in 2012. Here is their story:
In order to complete the week 13 assignment you must answer one of the following questions in around 300 words and email it to contact@vinceguerra.com. Please include your name, and the question you are answering:
Describe the US military presence in the Middle East prior to Desert Storm.
How did the Gulf War exemplify American military dominance?
How did small, seemingly isolated incidents around the world affect American military policy in the 1990’s?
week 14
Following the battle of Mogadishu, President Clinton removed U.S. troops from Somalia. Later, intelligence agencies would claim that this led Osama Bin Laden to liken the United States to a “paper tiger,” lacking the will to fight after experiencing casualties, and that this revelation encouraged him to invent more elaborate attacks:
[Note: In order to view this partial interview you will need to do so on YouTube.]Al-Qaeda’s first mass-casualty terrorist attacks took place at the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7th, 1998. The death of 224 people, including 12 Americans, was an overt act of war by the terrorist group:
For the first time in response to a major terrorist attack, the United States launched cruise missile attacks on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and also a suspected chemical weapons facility in Sudan. The U.S. continued to address most terrorist attacks from a law enforcement mindset as opposed to a military one, a strategy that proved highly ineffective:
Cruise missiles provided the bulk of the American military response to terrorism in the 1990s. They provided an easy — albeit expensive — way to strike any location, while minimizing the necessity for placing troops on the ground:
In Yemen, a small boat packed with explosives got close enough to detonate a hole in the USS Cole, an American warship, killing seventeen soldiers and nearly sinking the guided missile destroyer. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. There was no military response by the United States:
Of the 2,977 victims killed in the September 11 attacks, 412 were emergency workers in New York City who responded to the World Trade Center. Two brothers were making a documentary film of one of the firehouses that responded, and captured the events from the ground level. The film is both long and sprinkled with profanity, so it may be inappropriate for younger viewers, but I include it here as the single-greatest piece of media in existence for displaying the magnitude of the devastation at what was soon known as Ground Zero in the war on terror:
In the wake of 9/11 Osama Bin Laden emphatically denied his involvement. The video footage of his declaration is not available online anywhere that I could find; only the transcript of what he said still exists (this is also quite difficult to locate online):
In order to complete the week 14 assignment you must answer one of the following questions in around 300 words and email it to contact@vinceguerra.com. Please include your name, and the question you are answering:
Describe the way acts of terrorism against U.S. targets influenced U.S. military responses?
How did the “war on terror” begin?
“How significant was Osama Bin Laden to U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. military?