Then And Now; When Will We Learn?

The blindfolded gentleman on the left is one of the hostages from the United States Embassy in Tehran circa 1979. From a PBS article:

On November 4, 1979, an angry mob of young Islamic revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than sixty Americans hostage. "From the moment the hostages were seized until they were released minutes after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as president 444 days later," wrote historian Gaddis Smith, "the crisis absorbed more concentrated effort by American officials and had more extensive coverage on television and in the press than any other event since World War II."

The action by the mad mullahs in Iran and the ensuing hoopla by the media, the anger of the Americans and the gross incompetence of Jimmah Cahtuh, in part led to the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan one year later. But the mad mullahs weren't through fomenting troubles in those days, and they certainly aren't through now. Through the intervening decades the mad mullahs have continued to push the envelope, supporting terrorism, hatching plans of war, of nuclear armament, aggression and plans for a new holocaust; in spite of the fact that they deny the first one.

Many on the right (and perhaps a few on the left) warned then as now that these mad-men believe that they have divine blessings to carry out their plans to make the world an Islamic paradise. By hook or by crook, by direct aggression or by subterfuge they will not stop until they are stopped by internal revolution or by external threat.

When Carter was defeated by Reagan, the mullahs believed that Reagan would not be a patsy as Carter had been and that Reagan would not be shy about giving Iran the thump on the noggin they so richly deserved for their act of war. No, they figured they had pushed that envelope about as far as they could so to rub Carter's face in the mud, they released the hostages minutes after Reagan was sworn in as President.

Fast forward some twenty-seven and a half years and we find a British patrol vessel doing a routine search of a ship at the skirts of Iranian territorial waters and the process begins again. Thus, we have this photograph of three of the British hostages being held by the mad mullahs. As I noted here, there are serious consequences for ignoring (and thus rewarding) bad behavior. The world needs to rise up together and slap down the islamofascist mentality and the appeasement a la Neville Chamberlin will not work any better today than it did in the thirties. In fact, given the speed with which munitions, explosives and WMD can be moved around the world, considerably less well then it did in the thirties.

And yet, we have our own brand of yo-yo's in this country (and hell yes I question their patriotism and their judgement) and in government that openly side with the islamofascists by setting dates for pulling out. Some folk either don't get it, or they are too stupid to understand that anything we do that even convey's the tiniest wavering will be used by these murderous thugs. Yes, I said thugs, murderous, contemptable thugs, those that see nothing wrong with deliberately, with malace aforethought, blowing up children in order to advance their cause. Oh, I know, there will be yahoo's on the left that will say "Well, the US has dropped bombs and killed children." Yes, that is certainly true, but the canard is obvious on its face, one is a deliberate act with intended death of children, one is a deliberate act with unintended death of children but an intended tactical act of warmaking and not terrorism; and if you can't see the difference, don't bother trying to make the argument because you are wrong.

We pray for the safe release of the British military kidnapped by Iranian thugs, but equally, we pray that good people will wake up and see the danger before it is too late. I fear they won't, because they have a political agenda that is inimical to western interests, but I can pray that they will.

Posted by GM Roper at March 25, 2007 09:46 AM | TrackBack