The U.S. and friends take over a troubled Caribbean isle
The government is building a full-size jet airport so that visitors will be able to reach the island directly from North America and Europe. Enjoy the magnificent view where the Atlantic joins the Caribbean. On one side you will see a sparkling slate-black beach of volcanic sand and on the other, of brilliantly white coral sand.
—Grenada tourist brochure
At first, the North American visitors ignored the uncompleted airstrip, but they certainly took advantage of one of Grenada's many scenic beaches. A group of U.S. Navy Seals, trained in special seaborne operations, slipped silently ashore under the cover of darkness. Weapons in hand, they crept up the hill overlooking the quaint 18th century city of St. George's. They rushed toward Government House, where Sir Paul Scoon, the island's British-appointed Governor-General, had been held under virtual house arrest by Grenada's revolutionary Marxist military leaders. Driven back at first by gunfire from house guards, the Seals attacked again and took charge of the mansion.
The next visitors arrived in the pre-dawn light with all the thunder of rapid-fire U.S. Cobra and AC-130 helicopter gunships, Air Force C-5A and C-130 troop transports, and the supersonic boom of jet fighters. Two airports, one operational and the other being built, were much on their minds.
The assault began in two main strikes. At 5:36 a.m. on Tuesday, some 400 Marines aboard troop helicopters from the amphibious assault ship Guam roared into Pearls airport, the island's only functioning airstrip. Thirty-six minutes later, hundreds of U.S. Rangers, the Army's elite special forces, parachuted onto the barricaded, uncompleted 10,000-ft. strip at Point Salines on Grenada's southeastern tip. They had been dispatched from a staging airfield in Barbados, just 160 miles, or 45 minutes, away. Grenada, the once sleepy tourist haven, barely 80 miles off Venezuela in the Caribbean's Windward Islands, was now fully awake—and frightened.
For the first time since the end of the Viet Nam War, the U.S. had committed its troops to a combat attack. The abrupt use of force immediately drew a worldwide chorus of protest. U.S. allies, including British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, deplored the violation of Grenada's sovereignty. Many Latin American nations saw the invasion as a revival of the type of gunboat diplomacy that has haunted them for more than a century. At home, members of Congress and ordinary citizens alike wondered what had prompted President Reagan to take such drastic action against a tiny island. Coming only two days after the death of at least 229 Marines in Beirut, the move was sure to trigger a new debate on whether the Administration is increasingly relying on force as a complement to, if not a substitute for, diplomacy.