Recap of our 24 year war with the Arabs...

[caddmannq]

This was sent to me by an old friend. I thought I'd publish it here, hoping that it's all accurate. I didn't investigate the figures, dates, etc. myself. But having lived through all this, it seems reasonably correct to me.....Cadd

AMERICA WAKE UP!
That's what we think we heard on the 11th of September 2001 and maybe it was, but I think it should have been "Get Out of Bed!" In fact, I think the alarm clock has been buzzing since 1979 and we have continued to hit the snooze button and roll over for a few more minutes of peaceful sleep since then.

It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world's most powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on this sovereign US embassy set the stage for the events to follow for the next 23 years.

America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Viet Nam experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then, President Carter, had to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the desert. The ill-fated mission ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of America's inability to deal with terrorism. America's military had been decimated and downsized / right sized since the end of the Viet Nam war. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission that was doomed from the start.

Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and killed throughout the Middle East. America could do little to protect her citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US soil continued. In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high explosives was driven into the US Embassy compound in Beirut. When it explodes, it kills 63 people. The alarm went off again and America hit the Snooze Button once more.

Then just six short months later a large truck heavily laden down withover 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut. 241 US servicemen are killed. America mourns her dead and hit the Snooze Button once more. Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and America continues her slumber.

The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept. Soon the terrorism spreads to Europe. In April 1985 a bomb explodes in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid. Then in August a Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main, 22 are killed and the Snooze Alarm is buzzing louder and louder as US soil is continually attacked.

Fifty-nine days later a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked and we watched as an American in a wheelchair is singled out of the passenger list and executed. The terrorists then shift their tactics to bombing civilian airliners when they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of 1986 that killed 4 and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259. America wants to treat these terrorist acts as crimes; in fact we are still trying to bring these people to trial. These are acts of war. The Wake Up alarm is louder and louder.

The terrorists decide to bring the fight to America. In January 1993, two CIA agents are shot and killed as they enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The following month, February 1993, a group of terrorists are arrested after a rented van packed with explosives is driven into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and over 1000 are injured. Still this is a crime and not an act of war? The Snooze alarm is depressed again.

Then in November 1995 a car bomb explodes at a US military complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven service men and women. A few months later in June of 1996, another truck bomb explodes only 35 yards from the US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It destroys the Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring over 500. The terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America does not respond decisively. They move to coordinate their attacks in
a simultaneous attack on two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These attacks were planned with precision. They kill 224. America responds with cruise missile attacks and goes back to sleep.

The USS Cole was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling on 12 October 2000, when a small craft pulled along side the ship and exploded killing 17 US Navy Sailors. Attacking a US War Ship is an act of war, but we sent the FBI to investigate the crime and went back to sleep. And of course you know the events of 11 September 2001.

Most Americans think this was the first attack against US soil or in America. How wrong they are. America has been under a constant attack since 1979 and we chose to hit the snooze alarm and roll over and go back to sleep. In the news lately we have seen lots of finger pointing from every high official in government over what they knew and what they didn't know. But if you've read the papers and paid a little attention I think you can see exactly what they knew. You don't have to be in the FBI or CIA or on the National Security Council to see the pattern that has been
developing since 1979.

The President is right on when he says we are engaged in a war. I think we have been in a war for the past 23 years and it will continue until we as a people decide enough is enough. America has to "Get out of Bed" and act decisively now. America has changed forever. We have to be ready to pay the price and make the sacrifice to ensure our way of life continues. We cannot afford to hit the Snooze Button again and roll over and go back to sleep.

We have to make the terrorists know that in the words of Admiral Yamamoto after the attack on Pearl Harbor "that all they have done is to awaken a sleeping giant."

Dan Ouimette Captain (US Navy Ret)
Pensacola Civitan
19 Feb 2003

[TOAD6147]

But what does it mean? What is he saying? Yes, we may be at war with terrorists which are Arabic but who do we retaliate against? Just any old Arabic nation that happens to piss us off the particular day? We already have a cowboy in Washington doing that.

[zen]

[Cumhail]

It's disheartening to see the actions of a few used as justification for discriminating against the many. What ethnic and/or religious group is there that we could not find a littany of offenses that members of it have committed over time... does that make it right to hate the group(s) as a whole? Not to mention one little problem with the topic... Iranians aren't Arabs; they're Persians (different language, different ethnic group). Now perhaps the point of the speech was to vilify all muslims, rather than arabs... but even then we're presented with the fact that shi'ites and sunnis have such major differences between each other and their belief systems that each barely considers the other to be muslim at all; and they've been at war with each other for as long as the two sects have existed. All this above and beyond the fact that muslims include asians, whites, latinos, africans/african- americans, etc. across the world.

At the end of the day, I doubt all this detail is of any import to this apparent Captain Ouimette (I say apparent because it all sounds an awful lot like something I'd find on snopes.com...). Whoever the writer is, I think the main point is meant to be nice simple: "all arabs and/or muslims and/or people who kinda/sorta look like what we think arabs and/or muslims are supposed to look like (you may remember that an Indian Sikh gas attendant was murdered just after 9/11 because he wore a turban) are evil terrorists."

This is hate-speech (the speech-writer's, I mean), plain and simple. It's the exact same kind of logic that was applied by whites to blacks in apartheid South Africa, by some americans to first and second-generation Americans of Japanese descent during WWII, and by german nazis to jews in the events leading up to the holocaust.

Garbage spewed by any other name will smell just as putrid,

cumhail

[nurdonsite2]

Originally posted by Cumhail
It's disheartening to see the actions of a few used as justification for discriminating against the many. What ethnic and/or religious group is there that we could not find a littany of offenses that members of it have committed over time... does that make it right to hate the group(s) as a whole? Not to mention one little problem with the topic... Iranians aren't Arabs; they're Persians (different language, different ethnic group). Now perhaps the point of the speech was to villify all muslims, rather than arabs... but even then we're presented with the fact that shi'ites and sunnis have such major differences between each other and their belief systems that each barely considers the other to be muslim at all; and they've been at war with each other for as long as the two sects have existed. All this above and beyond the fact that muslims include asians, whites, latinos, african americans, etc. across the world.

At the end of the day, I doubt all this detail is of any import to this apparent Captain Ouimette (I say apparent because it all sounds an awful lot like something I'd find on snopes.com...). Whoever the writer is, I think the main point is meant to be nice simple: "all arabs and/or muslims and/or people who kinda/sorta look like what we think arabs and/or muslims are supposed to look like (you may remember that an Indian Sikh gas attendant was murdered just after 9/11 because he wore a turban) are evil terrorists."

This is hate-speech (the speech-writer's, I mean), plain and simple. It's the exact same kind of logic that was applied by whites to blacks in apartheid South Africa, by some americans to first and second-generation Americans of Japanese descent during WWII, and by german nazis to jews in the events leading up to the holocaust.

Garbage spewed by any other name will smell just as putrid,

cumhail

very very true.

[Theophylact]

Does this kind of racist talk offend the Powers That Be? Guess not; must be okay.

Good thing Timothy McVeigh was an ex-GI, though, or mentioning him in this context might get me in trouble.

[nunyadam]

It sounds to me as if it's aimed more at the al-quieda. Sure sounds like something I have seen before.

[U-96]

I don't think those Iranians woke up one morning and thought "let's take some American hostages".
American involvement (or as some may see it, "meddling") in Middle Eastern affairs goes back a long way further than '79, and has in almost all cases since 1956 been perceived as either to the benefit of Israel or the detriment of Muslims. The West's problems in the Middle East started after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, not in 1979.

Also, the 1986 F-111 strikes on Libya were hardly "pressing the snooze button"

The writer seems to suggest that anti-American terrorism in the Middle East emerged spontaneously while avoiding any responsiblity for contributing to the climate that promoted it. Junk history, selective memory.

[TOAD6147]

All good points, well said. Cudos.

[MTAtech]

The writer talks about the bombings and terrorism as if this happened in a vacuum. What the writer conveniently omits is the terrorism on the U.S. side. Ron Reagan sent the battleship New Jersey to Lebanon and had it indiscriminately shell the cities with shells the size of cars. Lots of innocent civilians were killed and many terrorists were created.

We support and continue to support dictators and tyrants in the region such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. These countries behead criminals, jail without trial and censor the press. We also supported as a friend Saddam Hussein from 1968-1990. We provided the gas used against the Kurds.
see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true