Posted on 11/29/2011 4:52:39 PM PST by nuconvert
One of the news stories I remember most vividly as a teenager was President Carter's botched rescue attempt of the hostages taken by Iran's Revolutionary Guard from the Tehran embassy. What stuck in my mind were the photographs of the charred corpses of the rescue crews in their burned-out helicopters. These photographs had, of course, been eagerly sanctioned by the Iranian regime as part of its gloating propaganda message to the US and its allies: "Suck on this, Great Satan!"
Those were not happy times for those us who believed, in proper Andrew Roberts fashion, that the world has never been a better place than when run according to the enlightened values of the two great Anglosphere Empires first Britain's, then America's. Here was that bulwark of freedom and Western civilisation America being utterly humiliated by the vicious zealots of an Islamofascist theocracy. Rather sooner than most of us had expected, the US was already experiencing its Suez moment.
And now it's happening all over again. OK, so this time the Embassy in question is Britain's not America's. But the similarities are more significant than the differences. What is happening now is happening for a very particular reason: because the West has lost its authority in the Middle East. By attempting to appease it it has shown the weakness which the Islamic world despises and which it is now exploiting with vicious glee.
The rot set in, of course, with President Obama's infamous Cairo Surrender Monkey speech, in which, inter alia, he apologised for the crusades, pandered to the Islamist notion of the Ummah, referred to the 9/11 killers not as "terrorists" but "violent extremists", and
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
When will the killer rabbit show up?
Was it because the Iranians sensed in the Gipper the kind of “strong horse” leader with whom it would be foolish to mess? You bet.
As I recall, a reporter asked candidate Reagan, What will you do about the hostages. Reagan answered with absolute sincerity and authority, I will get them back. When the reporter pressed on how, Reagan just repeated himself. As I recall the hostages were returned immediately after Reagan won the election, as the Iranians apparently believed hed take office immediately.
Former Iranians, now Americans, advised Carter to bomb a few oil platforms and threaten to keep it up and hed have the hostages back immediately. But, Carter was the non-violent commander in chief. (Lower case intended.) Non-violence doesnt work where hostage taking has been in the culture for 3,000 years.
Incidentally, for those who think Israel will be the target or even the only target, check out this picture:
In this speech Ahmadinejad gave not the American egg smashed on the ground? It makes me wonder who Ahmadinejad's real target is. An attack on the U.S. would certainly bring the hidden iman out into the open.
Your memory is faulty. The hostages were released literally minutes before Renaldus Magnus took office on January 20, 1981.
“Your memory is faulty. The hostages were released literally minutes before Renaldus Magnus took office on January 20, 1981.”
There was, and is, a rumor that Regan had made it clear through unofficial channels that this problem would come to an immediate and severe end shortly after he took office.
BTW, “TAAAAHD” on NBC, who obviously is well-connected to Dem mucky-mucks, pointed out that the images of the British Embassy were definitely not helping Carter...uhh...Obama.
Not quite exactly.
I remember the day as it was one of the warmest days in January in Seattle - ever!
The hostages were on a plane and left Iranian airspace FIVE MINUTES BEFORE RONALD REAGAN TOOK THE OATH OF OFFICE!
I have zero doubt that Mr. Reagan had called Ayatollah before that day and told him that if the hostages were not released, as soon as he was president he would turn Tehran into a glass parking lot.
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