CBS:

Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster delivered remarks at a Washington, D.C., ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon on Monday, where the two highlighted the administration's commitment to defeating terrorism. 

The Oct. 23, 1983, attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, and the suicide bombing at the U.S. Embassy there just a few months earlier, are often pointed to as the beginning of major anti-U.S. attacks from Islamist groups. Those two bombings, and the hundreds of casualties that resulted, led to the creation of the Diplomatic Security Bureau and new guidelines for U.S. posts and facilities around the world.

In the barracks attack, a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into the military barracks. President Ronald Reagan ordered the battleship USS New Jersey, stationed off the Lebanese coast, to bombard the hills near Beirut in retaliation. Months later, the Marines were ordered out of Lebanon.

McMaster said the day was a moment to honor the memory of those service men and women who were killed in the "mass murder" conducted at the "behest of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," making it the the deadliest surprise attack on Americans since Pearl Harbor. 

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