Merry Menagerie - I was looking at the world through an empty Bic pen

• Jul. 25, 2006
I was looking at the world through an empty Bic pen

How quickly we humans forget, or was I just to young to care. I was in high school during my first remembrance of terrorism, every evening when I got home from school the news would come on and Dan Rather would start the news saying this is day # of the hostages captivity. A group of militant students of radical Islam stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. When Ragan became president they released the hostages and in my mind it was over. But there was so much more going on, we seem to see the world looking through an empty Bic pen. Terrorist groups like the ones that took our 52 fellow country men hostage were forming all over the middle east. Islamic Jihad, Organization of the Oppressed on Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization all are considered synomous with Hezbollah by the US and Israel.

In Oct. 1983, our marine barracks were hit by a suicide bomber when he detonated a truck full of explosives. Do we remember who Caspar Weinberger thought it was? "Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger said the U.S. still lacks "actual knowledge of who did the bombing" of the Marine barracks. But it suspected Hezbollah, believed to be supported in part by Iran and Syria. Hezbollah denied its involvement."

Then the kidnappings started. Here is a piece from PBS's Frontline. Notice who our government believed to be responsible.

"The first American hostage, American University of Beirut President David Dodge, had been kidnapped in July 1982. Eventually, 30 Westerners would be kidnapped during the 10-year-long Lebanese hostage-taking crisis (1982-1992).

Americans who were kidnapped included journalist Terry Anderson, American University of Beirut librarian Peter Kilburn, and Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian minister. While some of the prisoners lived through captivity -- Anderson spent the longest time as a hostage, 2,454 days -- some, including Buckley, died in captivity or were killed by their kidnappers.

U.S. officials believed that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah was behind most of the kidnappings "

During this time Iran was using our hostages to gather weapons, They were running out of military supplies in it's war with Iraq, so we engaged in secret sale of arms to get our hostages back. This was discovered by the press and the U.S. set up the policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists.

Then do you remember the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in 1984? The U.S. State Department's 1999 report on terrorist organizations, saying Hezbollah are "known or suspected to have been involved" in the bombing.

Then at the end of 1984 Kuwait Airways Flight 221, on its way from Kuwait to Pakistan, was hijacked and diverted to Tehran. The hijackers demanded the release of the imprisoned terrorist. When the demand wasn't met, the hijackers killed two American officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development. On the sixth day of the hijacking, Iranian security forces stormed the plane and released the remaining hostages.

Iran arrested the hijackers, saying they would be brought to trail. However the trial never took place, and the hijackers were allowed to leave the country. Later press reports linked Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyah to the hijackings.

In 1985 TWA Flight 847 was hijacked en route from Athens to Rome and forced to land in Beirut, Lebanon, where the hijackers held the plane for 17 days. They demanded the release of the imprisoned terrorist again as well as the release of 700 fellow Shiite Muslim prisoners held in Israeli prisons and in prisons in southern Lebanon run by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army. When these demands weren't met, hostage Robert Dean Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver, was shot and his body dumped on the airport tarmac. U.S. sources implicated Hezbollah.

It seems to be the general consensus of Americans that this is Israel's fight and we should stay out. However, as we can see by history in the early 1980's we are hated just as much as Israel by Hezbollah and it's only a matter of time they will activate their secret cells here in America. Then when it becomes personal maybe Americans will realize there is more to this world than the view looking through a Bic pen.

Lord grant us the strength to persevere through your plan and do your will as a country.

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