Why Are So Many People Suddenly Obsessed With the USS Liberty Incident (Again)?

Every few months, it, seems, the USS Liberty incident makes the rounds online again.

Someone discovers it for the first time. Someone else insists it’s the greatest cover-up in American history. Social media fills with heated arguments, accusations, and declarations that this single event should permanently define America’s relationship with Israel.

And honestly, I don’t really understand the obsession.

Before anyone starts sharpening their pitchforks, let’s establish something up front: what happened to the USS Liberty was awful.

On June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy intelligence-gathering ship operating in international waters near the Sinai Peninsula. The attack killed 34 American servicemembers and wounded 171 more. The ship was heavily damaged but managed to stay afloat.

Whatever spurred the attack, it shouldn’t have happened. The U.S. ship was operating under a U.S. flag, and was not a belligerent in the conflict. Israel quickly claimed the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity. Multiple investigations over the decades reached varying conclusions, but the official position of both governments has remained that the attack was an accident rather than a deliberate attempt to sink an American vessel.

Many survivors disagreed. Many still do.

The debate over whether the attack was intentional has raged for nearly sixty years and probably will continue long after everyone reading this is gone.

But here’s the part I don’t get: why has this particular incident become such an obsession for so many people?

History is full of former enemies who eventually became allies. Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack that killed more than 2,400 Americans and dragged the United States into World War II. The war that followed was so brutal that it ended with America dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And yet, when I was stationed in Honolulu, I saw Japanese warships tied up in Pearl Harbor. Today, Japan is one of America’s closest allies. We maintain military bases there. We have a mutual defense agreement. American and Japanese servicemembers train together regularly. Entire generations have grown up viewing one another as friends rather than enemies.

Germany attacked virtually all of Europe. Twice. The Second World War resulted in tens of millions of deaths and some of the greatest atrocities in human history. Today, Germany is arguably the most influential nation in the European Union and one of America’s most important security partners.

The British burned the White House in 1814. Now we’ve been in a centuries-long geopolitical bromance.

The United States fought a brutal war in Vietnam that cost millions of lives and divided America for generations. Today, Vietnam and the United States enjoy increasingly strong diplomatic and economic ties, and many Vietnamese people are openly friendly toward Americans.

The list goes on and on.

History is not a collection of permanent grudges. Nations don’t survive by treating every past conflict as an eternal blood feud. They survive by recognizing reality, adapting to changing circumstances, and building relationships that serve their interests in the present.

That’s not the same thing as forgetting history.

We should remember Pearl Harbor.

We should remember the USS Liberty.

We should remember the Tet Offensive, the Battle of Britain, the Burning of Washington, and every other significant event that shaped the world we inherited.

But remembering history and being consumed by it are two different things.

I understand the drive to hold grudges. I still remember what Iran, and their explosively-formed projectiles, did to us in Iraq. But what makes the USS Liberty obsession especially strange is that the incident happened before most Americans alive today were even born.

Meanwhile, if someone’s goal is to criticize Israel, there is no shortage of contemporary issues to discuss. Whether it’s Israeli domestic politics, settlement policy, military operations, regional diplomacy, or America’s relationship with the Israeli government, there are plenty of current events worthy of debate.

Yet many people seem determined to make a 59-year-old naval incident the centerpiece of every discussion.

Why?

Part of it is probably because the questions surrounding the attack have never been fully settled in the minds of many Americans. Unanswered questions have a way of taking on a life of their own. But I suspect something else is happening too.

For some people, the USS Liberty isn’t really about the USS Liberty. It’s a proxy argument; a useful pretext to attack Israel. And again, there are PLENTY of more-contemporary examples to do so, if one is so inclined. We mentioned some of them right here in The Havok Journal.

But instead, a hyperventilating recitation of the Liberty is a way to conflate present-day political grievances through the lens of a historical event. The incident becomes less about the sailors who died in 1967 and more about contemporary arguments regarding Israel, American foreign policy, or broader geopolitical frustrations.

That’s understandable. But it’s also worth being honest about.

The USS Liberty deserves to be remembered as a tragedy that cost American lives. The men who served aboard her deserve respect. The families who lost loved ones deserve remembrance.

What they don’t deserve is to have their sacrifice endlessly recycled as ammunition in political arguments nearly six decades later.

History matters.But eventually, nations have to move forward.

If America can reconcile with Japan after Pearl Harbor, Germany after World War II, Britain after the War of 1812, and Vietnam after one of the most divisive conflicts in our history, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that the USS Liberty incident belongs where it has always belonged: in the history books.

Remember it.

Learn from it.

Honor the dead.

Then get on with the business of the nation.

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Charles served over 27 years in the US Army, which included seven combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with various Special Operations Forces units and two stints as an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also completed operational tours in Egypt, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea and earned a Doctor of Business Administration from Temple University as well as a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University. He is the owner of The Havok Journal, and the views expressed herein are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or any other person or entity.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.