A superb representation of the time and the event

Rating: 10/10 (12 August 2014)

In October 1983, after I had heard that the Marxist prime minister of Grenada had been murdered in a pro-Soviet coup, over my lunch hour I literally ran down from the Alaska State Office Building in Juneau (wherein I worked in the Alaska State Library) to the Alaska Federal Building and breathlessly burst into the Congressional offices. To my friends there, I hoarsed out that the government of Grenada was now illegitimate, that it was open season for anyone to liberate Grenada, and to get on the phone to Sen. Ted Stevens' foreign affairs staffer and ask him to tell Ted that we could turn the Cold War completely around if we acted militarily FAST.
I am sure it wasn't just me thinking this. In any case, staffers reputedly brought the decision to act militarily to President Reagan on the golf course, and after a few moments ... in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt ... he said YES, and Operation "Urgent Fury" was launched. (Granted, Maggie Thatcher's Commonwealth feathers were ruffled and *she* was furious, but President Reagan brought her around with his great Irish charm.) And our liberation of Grenada was indeed the boots on the ground military turning point of the Cold War, leading to our - and everyone's - Cold War victory *without* a World War 3.
What people have forgotten is that just before, our Marine barracks in Beirut Lebanon had been suicide-bombed and in that post-Vietnam era, our national morale was rock-bottom. On 1Sep83, there had also been the Red Air Force's ... unanswered ... massacre of Korean Air Lines flight 007, which had flown over Sakhalin Island - maybe unintentionally, maybe not, but nonetheless ....
Seldom have a nation's feelings ... and actions ... transformed so quickly as ours did with our Grenada operation.
Clint Eastwood's depiction of the Marine Corps and that military operation may be in some ways flawed, but nonetheless is an excellent depiction of all this and the of Marine Corps community's ready response.
For veterans like myself - Army draftee, Stateside and West Germany, 67-69 - it can be enjoyably funny. It was the first time I had ever heard the phrase "cluster f**k." We might keep in mind, though, how we reacted when Russia threatened our inner national security zone, when we criticize Russia's reaction to our own machinations within *its* inner national security zone today in Ukraine. If we don't, we could escalate this situation into nuclear holocaust overnight.
Lou Coatney