The Truth About 1980's Beirut

The Osprey book on the post 1973 IDF shows Beirut as damaged, but people still living reasonably normal lives, while a book by a US Special Forces soldier indicated that Beirut in that era was far more devastated. So who tells the truth?

Google up some photos from the Lebanese Civil War of that era and decide for yourself. By the time that Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied Beirut in 1982, the place was in pretty bad shape.

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Stickpusher is right. Do more research than two books. Over the many years modelling and research i have never found definitive answers. The next book will always change your viewpoint but will always add to your greater understanding. There are no black and white answers.

my guess is that they are both right, some areas woild be liveable will others were not, deprnding on which areas the respective authors visited as i doubt the went down every street to check them out to see what the situation was like.

Millions of people in the Third Reich lived what could be described as “reasonably normal lives”, even in April 1945.

C Co, 2 Bn, 10th Special Forces Group deployed to Beirut in June of 1983. I graduated the Q course in May, and by the time I got to Ft. Devens the teams were already in isolation, which meant none of us newly minted “Green Berets” got to go.
Guys who came back from that deployment were dropping cash for Saab 900 Turbos, which for some reason was very in vogue at the time. They simply saved all their per diem and slept ten men to a room.
According to them, the hotel was nice, as was the area they stayed. I guess up until the point an RPG round came into one of the rooms but failed to detonate. Other areas were pretty much levelled.
Although I was not there, I liken it to Kyiv - total devastation in some areas, yet we hear ICM is back in business doing their thing. Life goes on even in the worst of circumstances.

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I guess we can assume the countryside didn’t get too much damage.

One thing I failed to mention was seeing a news article posted in my workplace’s old building, about the fact that the Beirut Golf Club survived the war intact.

I guess that was because the PLO, Amal, Hezbollah, or one of the other community activist groups didn’t set up shop there - Members Only! :wink:

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On a side note, I highly recommend “Waltz with Bashir”, an award winning animated war documentary produced and directed by Ari Folman: https://youtu.be/ylzO9vbEpPg

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