Twenty-five years ago this week, a truck laden with explosives crashed through the security gate surrounding the compound housing the U.S. Marine presence in Beirut. The suicide bomber drove straight into the lobby of the Marine barracks and detonated explosives equivalent to 12,000 pounds of TNT. The force of the explosion collapsed the building, killing 241 American servicemen.

The bombing entered the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign when John McCain bragged that he stood up to President Ronald Reagan in opposing the deployment of the Marines to Beirut because he believed "that a few hundred Marines in a situation like that could not successfully carry out any kind of peacekeeping mission."

The American "peacekeeping" in Lebanon failed because the United States never realized that there can be no such thing as peacekeepers in a country where there is no peace to keep. The Marines equated peacekeeping with supporting President Amin Gemayel, himself one of the major sectarian players in the civil war. But the more that the United States propped up Gemayel, the more they were pushed into conflict with Lebanese Druze and Muslim groups. To this day, the Marine barracks bombing remains a reminder of the dangers of getting involved in other people's wars, even with the best of intentions.

The repercussions of the attack continue to this day, both for the United States and Lebanon. The Marines did not step on Lebanese soil again for more than two decades, when they returned to help Americans evacuate during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war.

For the Lebanese, the truck bombing marked the birth of a new form of assymetrical warfare, where small insurgency groups began to discover the weapons that would allow them to take on a militarily advanced superpower like the United States. The Marine barracks bombing was the mother of future terrorist attacks, from the World Trade Center attacks to suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan, that have shaped warfare for the past generation.