- Article
- Comments ()
- Videos
If recent surveys of public opinion are correct, war-weary Americans are already suffering "combat fatigue" from the most recent battle in the Global War on Terror -- the fight between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Apparently the U.S. public doesn't believe this bloody engagement has much to do with us -- hence the waning interest. Those who believe Hezbollah is simply an Israeli problem need to think again.
"Know your enemy" isn't just a hackneyed military slogan -- it's an essential survival tool in this new world disorder of global Islamic terror. Hezbollah is -- and has always been -- America's enemy.
When Lebanon descended into civil war along sectarian and ethnic lines in 1975, nearly a half-dozen rival factions with armed militias began a deadly struggle for power -- Christian, Sunni, Shia, Druze and Palestinian. Into this chaos, and well before Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini began sending Pasdaran -- Iranian Revolutionary Guards -- to the Lebanese Bakaa Valley to organize, train and equip the poorly armed, disparate Shi'ite militias into an effective politico-military force. Hezbollah was the result -- and almost immediately, Americans began to die.
From their bases in the Bakaa, Hezbollah terrorists launched a series of spectacular attacks against Americans, making it second only to al Qaeda in lethality:
April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber driving a pickup truck loaded with explosives rams into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 -- including 17 Americans. A second attack on the Embassy Annex in September kills two more Americans and injures 22 others.
Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber detonates a truck full of explosives inside the U.S. Marine barracks near Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. servicemen.
Dec. 12, 1983, Hezbollah operatives attack the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. Nearly simultaneous attacks are carried out against the emir of Kuwait, the French Embassy, the airport, a major oil refinery and an American residential compound. In all, six people die; more than 80 are wounded.
June 14, 1985: TWA Flight 847 is hijacked and landed at Beirut International Airport. During the seven-day stand-off, U.S. Navy Seabee Diver Robert Stetham is murdered aboard the aircraft and his body dumped on the tarmac.
April 2, 1986: A bomb aboard TWA Flight 840, enroute from Rome to Athens kills four Americans, including an infant girl.
Post a comment
There are comments on this article, submit your opinion!
If you feel there is still something worth mentioning about this entry please contact the author or the site admin.