“We captured Saddam Hussein and he was executed.”
My God, you don’t know history. I specifically said 1991, which was Desert Storm. That ended with a negotiated settlement which left Saddam Hussein in power. Saddam Hussein was captured in Gulf War II, some twelve years later, and executed three years after that.
“Isolated incidents. You left out the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 by by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. That was post Khomeini.”
Isolated incidents? One of them toppled Farouk’s reign! And, I didn’t forget about Sadat; I was pointing out to you some instances of Islamic Fundamentalism that changed or affected national governments BEFORE the 1979 Iranian Revolution, after you had said that it was because of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that Islamic Fundamentalist movements began to affect national governments.
I was there in 1991, including traveling to Kuwait a day after the war ended. I flew over and drove thru the burning oil fields. Eventually, Saddam received the ultimate justice. I didn't say it happened in 1991. What he did in Kuwait was a war crime. He paid the price. No such fate awaits Putin.
Isolated incidents? One of them toppled Farouk’s reign! And, I didn’t forget about Sadat; I was pointing out to you some instances of Islamic Fundamentalism that changed or affected national governments BEFORE the 1979 Iranian Revolution, after you had said that it was because of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that Islamic Fundamentalist movements began to affect national governments.
Militant Islamic fundamentalism did not become an international threat until Iran. bin Laden's two landmark fatwas, 1996 and 1998, laid the gauntlet down against the West. The 1996 fatwa was entitled, "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." OBL was emboldened by the Russian defeat in Afghanistan in 1989 and the humiliation of America in Iran with the 444 day hostage crisis beginning in 1979.