Posted on 01/03/2025 2:46:51 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Kevin Hermening, a Marine Security Guard when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran fell, says Carter’s bungling made America look like a ‘paper tiger.’
Kevin Hermening was a 20-year-old sergeant with the Marine Security Guard protecting the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when all hell broke loose. On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian students serving the Islamic Revolution stormed the compound and held more than 50 American citizens — including Hermening — hostage.
“We had 12-gauge shotguns and .38 caliber revolvers, and that was it,” Hermening told me this week during an interview on the “Vicki McKenna Show.” “We were way outnumbered.” The U.S. acting ambassador and the attaches gave the orders to the Marine security forces to lay down their weapons, the Wausau, Wisconsin, financial services professional said.
“There was nothing that was going to be done to shoot our way out of it,” Hermening recalled of the chaotic day, now 45 years in the world’s rearview mirror but still so present in U.S. foreign affairs.
The Marine and 51 others would spend the next 444 days as hostages of an unholy war that made the world’s greatest superpower look like a chump on the world stage (The revolutionaries released 13 hostages in the opening weeks of the Iran Hostage Crisis, including all of the women taken as well as the black captives — billed as “oppressed minorities” by the Iranian oppressors).
As fond to fawning remembrances of James Earl Carter flow from the pages of the corporate press following Sunday’s passing of the 39th president, many of the glowing obituaries are leaving out or glossing over some critical details. While Jimmy Carter in many ways...
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
They had shotguns and revolvers and gave up? I was a baby when this took place. Maybe I shouldn’t judge.
I don’t think you should judge because if memory serves me right those brave Soldiers of Allah pushed the women and children in front of them as they hid behind them creeping forward.
Shotguns and revolvers are close-range weapons.
No match for rifles.
This was an unprecedented situation. The host country always provided security beyond the perimeter of embassy grounds, before this incident - standard diplomatic protocol.
I seem to recall that the Pakistani Government killed some of their own citizens, protecting the U.S. Embassy, in Islamabad, during the same time period. The Embassy staff who ordered The Marines to lay down their arms likely thought the Iranian Government would rescue them, before the day was over.
If you think about that mindset, it made sense, you would want the same level of protection extended to your people, in a foreign land. The Islamic regime turned common sense thinking, upside down.
I remember from back then...
How can a country that spends billions on defense be short 12 helicopters..
The Democrats and their henchpersons in the Propaganda Press are desperate for something—ANYTHING!—that might cast their sinking ship in a favorable light and make it appear to float.
“Henchpersons?” There’s a new PC Woke word I’ve never heard before.
I wanted to include the henchwomen too.
None of them would have made it out alive had they shot the Iranians.
What did I know? I came from a family of dyed in the wool Irish- American Catholic Democrats.
My father FDR was The Second Coming.
My dad was a two term democrat town councilman in the town I grew up in.
I thought Republicans were the scum of the Earth.
It was listening to Rush Limbaugh, at first to mock him but after a while I realized I agreed with everything he said. Rush Limbaugh led me out of the wilderness of liberalism. Thanks El Rushbo.
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