Urgent Fury: The Risks of Turning Operational Ineptitude into Strategic Success

On the morning of 25th October 1983, the Armed Forces of the United States spearheaded a combined Joint Forces assault on the Eastern Caribbean Island of Grenada. Ostensibly, the invasion was conducted to protect/rescue approximately 1,000 Americans, 600 of them attending medical school on the island, from becoming collateral damage in the aftermath of a Marxist coup. 1Casualty figures and estimates of the numbers of persons involved in the conflict are drawn from: Ronald H. Cole, Operation Urgent Fury—Grenada, (Washington, DC, 1997) p. 6 & 11 President Ronald Reagan argued that the coup p…