It's not the same as what you're selling.
Posted on 10/26/2004 6:04:21 AM PDT by SmithPatterson
Walter Cronkite Decries War in Iraq
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Veteran newsman Walter Cronkite said Americans aren't any safer because of the U.S.-led war on Iraq.
"The problem, quite clearly, is we have excited the Arab world, the Muslim world, to take up arms against us," Cronkite said Saturday, adding that this excitement far exceeds the anger that existed among terrorist groups prior to the war.
Cronkite made the comments after receiving an award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation during the group's gala at Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort.
He said the Nov. 2 presidential election will be one of the most important since perhaps the Civil War because it comes on the heels of a drastic change in U.S. foreign policy and a ballooning national debt.
The war on Iraq marked the first time the United States has conducted a pre-emptive invasion and occupation of another country, he noted.
Asked what it will take to achieve peace, Cronkite said, "It certainly has to include, as a major factor, diplomacy."
The 87-year-old retired news anchor, dubbed "the most trusted man in America," was given the foundation's Distinguished Peace Leadership Award for "courageous leadership in the cause of peace." Past recipients include the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jacques Cousteau and Jordan's King Hussein.
Still some sludge left in the crankcase I see.
The only thing worse than being irrelevant, is being old and irrelevant.
"The problem, quite clearly, is we have excited the Arab world, the Muslim world, to take up arms against us," Cronkite said Saturday, adding"
What does Senile Walter think 9-11 was????
The old dirtbag just wanted to show that he's still BIASED. I guess he just wanted to get in one good liberal plug before the election.
Same old liberal argument: Bush has created more terrorists.
"The only thing worse than being irrelevant, is being old and irrelevant"
How about being old, irrelevant and talking like an idiot?
Does anyone have an address where we can write this crank?
Wally Crankenhouse is still alive? Amazing what complete irrelevance can do to a liberal-demokkkRAT's festering, fetid mind.
Walter is getting up in years. He has trouble remembering things. He doesn't remember September 11. He doesn't remember the earlier bombing of the WTC, the attack on the Cole, the American embassy bombings, Khobar towers, the marine barracks. He doesn't remember that the Arab world took up arms decades ago.
Poor Walter. He is hopeless.
Cronkite and Andy Looney should be at the dog track arguing over the last jar of tapioca pudding.
Yeah, that's it. We excited 'em.
Eat your pudding, Walter.
Serious question since I am no historian on 'war' but has any war ever been won (none of this 'we'll call it a draw' stuff)using diplomacy without first handing one side its a** or at least showing it that it was about to be handed its a**? All this talk about talk, doesn't seem to me based on any historical precident. Someone needs to be convinced they have lost.g
Walter's got it bassakerds. WE did not "excite" them and CAUSE them to attack us. THEY attacked us, and we finally got excited about protecting ourselves, thanks to our AUTHENIC action President Bush.
Hello? Natural causes? Where are you?
I think most of it is on his bib.
It's not the same as what you're selling.
Hello? Natural causes? Where are you?
Note to Walt:
AMERICA's war on terrorism did not begin in September 2001. It began in November 1979. That was shortly after Ayatollah Khomeini had seized power in Iran, riding the slogan "Death to America" - and sure enough, the attacks on Americans soon began.
In November 1979, a militant Islamic mob took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the Iranian capital, and held 52 Americans hostage for the next 444 days. The rescue team sent to free those hostages in April 1980 suffered eight fatalities, making them the first of militant Islam's many American casualties.
Others included:
April 1983: 17 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut.
October 1983: 241 dead at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
December 1983: five dead at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.
January 1984: the president of the American University of Beirut killed.
April 1984: 18 dead near a U.S. airbase in Spain.
September 1984: 16 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut (again).
December 1984: Two dead on a plane hijacked to Tehran.
June 1985: One dead on a plane hijacked to Beirut.
After a let-up, the attacks then restarted: Five and 19 dead in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, 224 dead at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and 17 dead on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Simultaneously, the murderous assault of militant Islam also took place on U.S. soil:
July 1980: an Iranian dissident killed in the Washington, D.C. area.
August 1983: a leader of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam killed in Canton, Mich.
August 1984: three Indians killed in a suburb of Tacoma, Wash.
September 1986: a doctor killed in Augusta, Ga.
January 1990: an Egyptian freethinker killed in Tucson, Ariz.
November 1990: a Jewish leader killed in New York.
February 1991: an Egyptian Islamist killed in New York.
January 1993: two CIA staff killed outside agency headquarters in Langley, Va.
February 1993: Six people killed at the World Trade Center.
March 1994: an Orthodox Jewish boy killed on the Brooklyn Bridge.
February 1997: a Danish tourist killed on the Empire State building.
October 1999: 217 passengers killed on an EgyptAir flight near New York City.
In all, 800 persons lost their lives in the course of attacks by militant Islam on Americans before September 2001 - more than killed by any other enemy since the Vietnam War. (Further, this listing does not include the dozens more Americans in Israel killed by militant Islamic terrorists.)
And yet, these murders hardly registered. Only with the events of a year ago did Americans finally realize that "Death to America" truly is the battle cry of this era's most dangerous foe, militant Islam.
In retrospect, the mistake began when Iranians assaulted the U.S. embassy in Tehran and met with no resistance.
Interestingly, a Marine sergeant present at the embassy that fateful day in November 1979 agrees with this assessment. As the militant Islamic mob invaded the embassy, Rodney V. Sickmann followed orders and protected neither himself nor the embassy. As a result, he was taken hostage and lived to tell the tale. (He now works for Anheuser-Busch.)
In retrospect, he believes that passivity was a mistake. The Marines should have done their assigned duty, even if it cost their lives. "Had we opened fire on them, maybe we would only have lasted an hour." But had they done that, they "could have changed history."
Standing their ground would have sent a powerful signal that the United States of America cannot be attacked with impunity. In contrast, the embassy's surrender sent the opposite signal - that it's open season on Americans. "If you look back, it started in 1979; it's just escalated," Sickmann correctly concludes.
To which one of the century's great geostrategist thinkers, Robert Strausz-Hupé, adds his assent. Just before passing away earlier this year at the age of 98, Strausz-Hupé wrote his final words, and they were about the war on terrorism: "I have lived long enough to see good repeatedly win over evil, although at a much higher cost than need have been paid. This time we have already paid the price of victory. It remains for us to win it."
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Militant Islam Reaches America."
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