Posted on 06/16/2005 8:25:37 AM PDT by Cool Chick
Twenty Years after TWA 847, No Lessons Learned
By Debbie Schlussel
Twenty years ago, this week, Hezbollah terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847, and trampled Navy Diver Robert Stethem to death.
Stethem's only crime was being American.
The hijacking and murder was among the first televised Islamic terror attacks against Americans, unfolding on TV screens over 17 days.
Twenty years later, disturbing kowtowing to Hezbollah terrorists shows we've learned nothing from Stethem's brutal murder at the hands of Islamic terrorists. On September 11, 2021, will it be worse?
On June 15, 1985, Hezbollah hijackers seized the TWA flight in Athens. Identifying Robert Dean Stethem as an American serviceman, they brutally beat and tortured the 23-year-old Stethem to death. Then, they threw his body off the plane, like garbage. Stethem was so badly beaten that he could only be identified from fingerprints. He was on his way home after a tour of duty with the US Navy in the Middle East.
But Stethem never made it home. His next and final stop was Arlington National Cemetery.
At the time, the President was Ronald Reagan, a heroic leader who didn't give in to Islamic terror. Well, almost. In 1983, Hezbollah terrorists (with the help of the PLO and Syria) attacked and killed over 300 U.S. Marines and civilians in Beirut, while they slept. It was the bloodiest attack on the Marine Corps since World War II. But President Reagan didn't strike back. Instead, he pulled out of Lebanon. He sent a signal to Hezbollah and other Islamic terrorists that their attacks would not be answered, that America was weak. That gave Hezbollah the courage to hijack the plane and brutally kill Stethem, almost two years later.
Lebanon never apologized for Stethem's murder
(Excerpt) Read more at debbieschlussel.com ...
I forget, who was that US President?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Right on. She mentions that in the rest of the article on her site. That villa in Beirut's got a lotta bullet holes in the walls, huh?
naw, i was serious, i didnt know it was Reagan. (I'm a youngin, born only a month before Stethem was murdered).
Yeah, those werent Reagan's shining moments. But I think its safe to say that two presidents later, much more happened to encourage the terrorists all the world over.
While I think Reagan was overall good against terrorists, though Schlussel raises a great point about how he cowardly pulled out of Lebanon (and we were there to protect the Palestinians from the Israelis who had invaded--why we needed to protect them, I haven't a clue), it is true that Israel could have assassinated Arafat in Lebanon in the early 80s. But they didn't, at Reagan's and George Schultz's request. Instead, then-General Ariel Sharon took a photo of Arafat and sent it to Schultz to show him he was in Israel's gunsites. Too bad they didn't kill him then. He'd never have returned to "the territories," and the Palestinians would never be the emboldened people today that they became under Arafat's "leadership." Reagan is to blame for that--even though I think he's the greatest President of my time.
Couldn't agree with you more. We need a firm president (Bush WAS, and is still better than most alternatives) who will secure the border, not cave to the oil sultans, and stand up to China as well.
I wish now more than ever that we could get off of oil dependency and move toward other sources. (NUCLEAR?!?!) This coming from someone working in the (mideast) refinery construction industry...
As soon as we can move away from oil, the middle east will be irrelevant.
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