Today is the 25th anniversary of the day the jihadis declared war on America. On Nov. 4, 1979 Islamist students in Tehran overan the U.S. embassy and took 66 Americans hostage. The hostages were held for 444 days. They were released on Jan. 20, 1981--the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.
But the hostages were not released simply because the Iranians feared Reagan's wrath. Jimmy Carter may be responsible for our present woes. You see, Carter negotiated a deal with the terrorists. The deal was that the US would unfreeze $8 billion dollars in Iranian assets in return for the hostages. The jihadis learned a vluable lesson: America will give in to their demands when American lives are on the line.
The Iranian revolution was an Islamist revolution. It took secular and forward looking Persia down the path to the Middle Ages of barbaric Islamic law. While the Shia Islam of Iran may seem more moderate than Wahhabism to many in the West, the Islamic law of the Islamic Republic is that which routinely sentences people to death for blasphemy, adultery, or other religious crimes.
The worst part of the Iranian revolution was that it exported the notion of the Islamic revolutionary state. From Marxism it imported the notion that society could be completely revamped--that a sort of utopia could be found in Islamic law. And like Marxism, it took on a missionary zeal to export the Islamist ideal to the rest of the Muslim world.
Through funding and sponsorship of Hamas, Iran has destabilized an already volitile region. Through funding and sponsorship of Hizballah, Iran brought down an entire nation and thrust Lebanon into a bloody civil war. Iran funded those that murdered hundreds of American troops in the 1983 suicide bombing in Beirut. Iran continues to fund organizations that murder Jews wherever they may be found, revolutionary movements in North Africa, and is bent on turning any future Palestinian state into an Islamic Republic modeled after their own barbaric country.
Iran was a peaceful, forward looking nation until the Revolutionary zeal of the Islamist ideology gripped it. Like the French Revolutionaries before them, the Iranian jihadis were not content to murder their own intellectuals, businessmen, and non-orthodox religionists--they had a higher calling to spread the utopian Islamic state abroad. Napolean found that the English would not tolerate his Imperialistic goal of spreading the French Revolution, and so Europe was plunged into a war that would cost the lives of millions. The English people, though, were saved the misery of the Napoleonic wars by virtue of the English Channel. Enlish soldiers would bring the fight to the French Revolutionary Army and not wait for Napolean to bring the war to Brittain.
Like the English before us, America found itself in the position of standing between the Iranian revolutionaries and their vision of the global caliphate. The US became the 'Great Satan', the obstacle, the one nation with the power to stall the inevitable coming of Sharia law to all Muslim nations (and eventually beyond). So, the jihadis declared war on that day. Their war aims were simply stated and straightforward--weaken American resolve so that jihad could spread unchecked throughout the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia. Unlike the English before us, America retreated, only fighting the jihadis through our proxies and never fully aware of the dangers of this cancerous ideology. We had bigger fish to fry. The Cold War seemed much more imminent and the stakes certainly were much higher. We slept.
September 11th may have awakened us to the fact that we were at war, but that war had been declared long ago. It was declared 25 years ago today by the extremists in Iran. Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is seeking nuclear technology--technology that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons--and the Europeans have taken the Carter route in dealing with the mullahs. For each concession given to them by the Europeans, the jihadis in Iran see Western weakness. They saw this weakness in the US as we gave them cash in exchange for the hostages. They saw this weakness as Reagan retreated from Lebanon. We can bear to show them weakness no more.
The time has come to realize when and who first began this Third World War of Islamists bent on taking one-third of the world back to the darkest days of the Middle Ages versus those that would see freedom and liberty become the inheritance of all mankind. That war was started 25 years ago today, and it was the Iranian revolutionaries that fired the first shot.
Earlier today, a friend of mine said: "I'm incensed that I can't find a single word in any newspaper about today being the 25 year anniversary of an unambiguous but unrecognized declaration of war against America." I'm doing my part. Please help spread the word.
(Cross-posted at Jawaland and Demosophia)
Launched by Rusty at November 5, 2004 04:29 AMI remember that year well. That was my personal year of hell. For over a year I worked 2 flights up from the Iranian Embassy in NY.
What angered me the most during that time was the fact that the Secret Service protected the ambassador, his family and senior staff. Our hostages had no such luxury. They were not even treated decently or as prisoners of war.
On a weekly basis we were forced to evacuate the building due to bomb threats or false fire alarms.
The ambassador and their senior staff smugness and condescension reached a boiling point with me when early one morning I was asked to step out of the elevator by one of their senior staff member, so the ambassador could go up without a woman in the car.
I was so angered by that statement and it's implications that I refused. I was threatened by them and the Secret Service tried using their clout by threatening to arrest me.
My reply: "Go ahead, arrest me and carry me out. I'm sure my firm [the owner's of the bldg] will love to hear how I was threatened by Foreign Terrorists on American soil. If I'm arrested I'll be out in time to give a statement on the six o'clock news on how Iranian militants treat women, especially American women. I said more, but the elevator opposite from me opened up and the men backed away from me and my little loud mouth.
My fervent wish at that time was for the ambassador and his staff to feel half fear and terror the hostages felt in Tehran. I can still vividly remember the Ambassador's face during that confrontation. I will never forgive Jimmy Carter for what he allowed them to do to the hostages and for his limp-wristed action and negotiation with the terrorists.
Man did you touch a nerve with this post!
Posted by: michele at November 5, 2004 07:01 PMJimmy Carter? Isn't he a revered EX-PRESIDENT?
He barely lost his re-election bid right?
...uh... he was THROWN out of office for
gross incompetence.
Kerry lost the election the night he had
Carter speak at the convention.