Posted on 09/09/2002 6:45:45 PM PDT by rdb3
America's war on terrorism did not begin in September 2001. It began in November 1979.
That was shortly after Ayatollah Khomeini had seized power in Iran, riding the slogan "Death to America" - and sure enough, the attacks on Americans soon began. In November 1979, a militant Islamic mob took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the Iranian capital, and held 52 Americans hostage for the next 444 days.
The rescue team sent to free those hostages in April 1980 suffered eight fatalities, making them the first of militant Islam's many American casualties. Others included:
April 1983: 17 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut.
October 1983: 241 dead at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
December 1983: five dead at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.
January 1984: the president of the American University of Beirut killed.
April 1984: 18 dead near a U.S. airbase in Spain.
September 1984: 16 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut (again).
December 1984: Two dead on a plane hijacked to Tehran.
June 1985: One dead on a plane hijacked to Beirut.
After a let-up, the attacks then restarted: Five and 19 dead in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, 224 dead at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and 17 dead on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Simultaneously, the murderous assault of militant Islam also took place on U.S. soil:
July 1980: an Iranian dissident killed in the Washington, D.C. area.
August 1983: a leader of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam killed in Canton, Mich.
August 1984: three Indians killed in a suburb of Tacoma, Wash.
September 1986: a doctor killed in Augusta, Ga.
January 1990: an Egyptian freethinker killed in Tucson, Ariz.
November 1990: a Jewish leader killed in New York.
February 1991: an Egyptian Islamist killed in New York.
January 1993: two CIA staff killed outside agency headquarters in Langley, Va.
February 1993: Six people killed at the World Trade Center.
March 1994: an Orthodox Jewish boy killed on the Brooklyn Bridge.
February 1997: a Danish tourist killed on the Empire State building.
October 1999: 217 passengers killed on an EgyptAir flight near New York City.
In all, 800 persons lost their lives in the course of attacks by militant Islam on Americans before September 2001 - more than killed by any other enemy since the Vietnam War. (Further, this listing does not include the dozens more Americans in Israel killed by militant Islamic terrorists.)
And yet, these murders hardly registered. Only with the events of a year ago did Americans finally realize that "Death to America" truly is the battle cry of this era's most dangerous foe, militant Islam.
In retrospect, the mistake began when Iranians assaulted the U.S. embassy in Tehran and met with no resistance.
Interestingly, a Marine sergeant present at the embassy that fateful day in November 1979 agrees with this assessment. As the militant Islamic mob invaded the embassy, Rodney V. Sickmann followed orders and protected neither himself nor the embassy. As a result, he was taken hostage and lived to tell the tale. (He now works for Anheuser-Busch.)
In retrospect, he believes that passivity was a mistake. The Marines should have done their assigned duty, even if it cost their lives. "Had we opened fire on them, maybe we would only have lasted an hour." But had they done that, they "could have changed history."
Standing their ground would have sent a powerful signal that the United States of America cannot be attacked with impunity. In contrast, the embassy's surrender sent the opposite signal - that it's open season on Americans. "If you look back, it started in 1979; it's just escalated," Sickmann correctly concludes.
To which one of the century's great geostrategist thinkers, Robert Strausz-Hupé, adds his assent. Just before passing away earlier this year at the age of 98, Strausz-Hupé wrote his final words, and they were about the war on terrorism: "I have lived long enough to see good repeatedly win over evil, although at a much higher cost than need have been paid. This time we have already paid the price of victory. It remains for us to win it."
A little fire is quickly trodden out;
Which, being suffer'd, rivers cannot quench.-- III King Henry VI.
It also begs the question with respect to several other potential attacks: WTC I, Oklahoma City and TWA 800...
So do I. Therefore, lock and load.
(btw...quite an ending to that KC game yesterday, rdb3...painful!)
Don't use those words with that Marine sergeant you mentioned. Dems and Pubs support the military during war time, but when the shooting stops, the DEMs turn their backs on our service men and women. The PUBs, whether or not they wore the uniform, always support the military in war and in peace.
Therein lies the problem; we face a war with ourselves first - and militant islam second.
We (we as a nation, and we as Western civilization) have convinced ourselves that one must not criticize another's religion. We pride ourselves on freedom of religion - whether that religion be Santeria or Satanism, Hinduism or Athiesm, Christianity or Wicca. And yes, islam is in there too.
But if militant islam is in fact the enemy, what are we to do? How do we fight it? Our own beliefs as a society restrain our acts. In the last war with Iraq, Saddam moved weapons into mosques. And we, poor fools that we are, declined to do anything because of the mosque. We capture terrorists, and then we find ourselves constrained to be nice without limit - to give them special diets, to facilitate their prayers, to tolerate their provocations. And we allow groups to recruit within our own nation, and to do so with impunity. Our leaders quake in fear at the mere suggestion that they are intolerant of islam.
We can defeat militant islam; it won't be easy, but it can be done. However...first we must be prepared to do what is now unthinkable. We must fight a particular part of a religion.
That's one I'll never forget. Those Marines deployed out of Camp Lejeune (Jacksonville, NC) my home town and their memorial is there.
Ah! I see you're one after my own heart.
Excellent.
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