There are other American and Canadian hostages in Iran, including Hossein Derakshan, aka “Hoder,” one of the most celebrated early Iranian bloggers, who was arrested during a trip to Iran in 2008.
And so it goes.
Each of these stories has a certain fascination, and taken together they show just how lawless the world is, but their significance goes well beyond their separate dramas. Hostages play an important policy role, but you’d never guess it by the stuff you read in the popular press, or even in some of the highbrow journals. Just for starters, when the Russian foreign minister and chief spook travel to Damascus in the middle of violent turmoil to deal with hostages, you know it’s an important matter. Important in the affairs of states, not just in the lives of the unfortunate victims.
Hostages aren’t released for humanitarian reasons very often; for the most part they are ransomed. Sometimes — think Somali pirates — corporations pay. More often, it’s governments. I can promise you that the three American ”hikers” were ransomed, and that the U.S. government paid a price for their freedom. I don’t know the price, and I’ve encouraged a small army of journalists to try to find out, but they haven’t pursued it very avidly. Nor do they seem very curious about hostages in the context of the “dialogue” between the Obama administration and the Khamenei regime. Secret talks go on all the time, sometimes through one of the three major channels (the Sultan of Oman, old man Talebani, and Turkish President Erdogan), sometimes directly (as when a State Department official met an Iranian counterpart late last fall, or when President Obama sends a note to Khamenei via the Swiss), sometimes indirectly (the so-called “Track Two” talks involving former American officials and academics and Iranian friends of the supreme leader). How often do the hostages come up in these exchanges? What does Iran want from us before freeing a hostage? To what extent are American options — and even public statements — conditioned by fear that an American hostage will be killed if we do the wrong thing?
For many years, there was a polite conceit to the effect that we Westerners did not negotiate with terrorists or terror states for hostages, but nobody believes that any more, not with Israel releasing thousands of convicted terrorists for one soldier, not with the German foreign minister going personally to Tehran to bring back an arrested German journalist, not with top Russians brokering hostage swaps between Ankara and Damascus.
It’s an important matter, but we don’t want to talk about it. It’s creepy and humiliating. It makes us do things we don’t want to do.
Which, needless to say, is why they do it.
You mention that “Americans and the Canadian in Iran get only occasional attention”. Isn’t that a good thing? Imagine the Shalit-like pressure on their governments if the press were constantly making a big deal of them…
No, I don’t think so. We should shine a glaring light upon any country which engages in such behavior. We should embarrass them, engage them, annoy them and sanction them, cut off money to them and deport their citizens back to them. There is nothing to be gained by being a mild mannered nation when dealing with a world full of power mad lunatics. They do not respect those who fear them or back off. They only respect people who will obliterate them if they don’t watch their step.
I don’t have a problem with forceful responses to hostage situations–but even those are, I think, more easily taken when the spotlight is somewhere else. Media attention increases the pressure on the hostages’ country in a very dangerous way: anything short of a quick release of all hostages (say, a rescue mission that’s only partially successful, or a counterstrike that fails to win any concessions from the hostage-takers) will be picked apart until it looks like a complete failure, while a craven capitulation will be celebrated, Shalit-style, as a great success. Much better to allow the hostages’ country to be able to dictate the terms of the interaction, responding in the time, place and manner of its choosing, without having to worry constantly about the “optics” of its decisions.
Don’t forget all the Colombians kept hostage by the FARC (lots of soldiers, some politicians, and some people just held for ransom).
“It makes us do things we don’t want to do.”
Or, in the case of President Taqqiya and his administration, provides cover for things they very much want to do, but don’t dare “volunteer” to do.
The media knows that Jimmy Carter’s incompetence during the Iran hostage crisis is a major reason Carter lost his bid for reelection.
This is why America’s media is quiet about current Americans held hostage. They won’t promote stories that hurt Obama’s reelection chances.
Hostage taking is the Islamic way. After all they are told to emulate their “Profit’ and he took hostages too. The women were made sex slaves and the male hostages to be returned for profits or just used as slaves.
Jimmy Carter was also an Evangelical, which is why the media establishment was willing to throw him under the bus. Obama, not so much.
What are Americans hanging around in Egypt for? Why are they staying there?
Don’t you know? Liberals are protected by the Constitution where ever they go! After all Obama can send in the Marines or SEALs to rescue them! October surprise!!!
This is what will happen….Sir you have hit the answer….This will work out to be a big media circus, until the right moment and the SEALS will be sent in to free them….obuzard0 is evil to the core….He knows nothing but evil….This has all been rehearsed over and over, the son of a high govt. official, held somewhere hostage, in one of the 4 star hotels, Saudi Arabia, footing the 1.4 million AID to Egypt, at 0buzard0s instructions, You remember his real Oct. suprize has already been blown….the death ,”so called” of UBL…..This is being set up as 2 phase of the drama show of 0b and co, as the next best thing…0buzardo is in bed with every Satanic Power that hell can muster, and 0b also is led by Powers of darkness that will see to his reelection….Yes he will be re elected…..Unless every decent G0d fearing Christian and Jew calls upon the one true G0d for mercy and intervention, and this Power Machine of Satanic evil can be defeated….But what do we do then, allow some rino like every one of these losers to blow it for us…..In my opinion there is only one true conservative that merits the call, Ms, Sarah Palin, with a host of unheard of Tea Party conservatives that will fight like hell to right this great ship…..Please dear G0d help the USA AND ISRAEL TO WEATHER THIS ONSLAUGHT OF evil..J. Belton…Atl. Ga…..
There are no “hostages” in Egypt that I am aware of; there are American foreign nationals meddling in internal Egyptian politics and doing so without legal permission. Democracy ain’t democracy and law ain’t law unless it agrees with one’s world view.
Are they being used as pawns? Possibly. Have other NGOs been targeted with Egyptian nationals? Most certainly. This may be a crackdown on human rights groups in general. Hopefully we won’t see any photos of the “hostages” sleeping peacefully in a chair with a caption that says they’ve been tear gassed.
The only people that I’m aware of that are meddling in Egyptian government affairs is the Obama administration – blocking funding and protection for the true moderates, orchestrating a coup, enabling and funding the Muslim Brotherhood….do you really think that it’s a coincidence that all of the secular leaders in the Middle East are being simultaneously overthrown in favor of religious Islamic socialist leadership? This is a function of the present administration, the UN, the world communist organizations and people with way too much money, time and hatred, like George Soros. Open your eyes.
And yet those 19 Americans, (out of 43 other nationals accused overall) are accused of trying to circumvent and manipulate the results of Egypt’s revolution in America and Israel’s favor. One of them is the son of an Obama cabinet official. So which is it? Obama and our gov’t is funding what, which side?
And yes it is a coincidence: how do you think America manipulated the murder of Khaled Said in Egypt and the self-immolation of a fruit vendor in Tunisia? Khaled Said’s picture is never far from the epicenter of the protests and you might want to educate yourself as to the particulars of what’s happening here before you tell others to open their eyes. America is not in back of the Arab revolts but far in the rear trying to catch up and institute damage control.
Will the Easter Bunny be coming to your house?
Probably before you ever come to the middle east so you can substitute experience for the all-seeing and all-knowing keyboard coupled with sheer intellect which combine to trump all experience, relegating it to useful idiot status just to pump up your ego. By your standard why would anyone ever go anywhere? One can just “figger” everything out by browsing news reports and blogs in the comfort of your living room. By an amazing coincidence, this frees you up from the necessity of doing what you wouldn’t do anyway. Convenient the living room.
“I can promise you that the three American ”hikers” were ransomed, and that the U.S. government paid a price for their freedom. I don’t know the price, and I’ve encouraged a small army of journalists to try to find out, but they haven’t pursued it very avidly.”
Money for hostages. Now we’re paying ranson to the Iranians. How about we do a few things to wreck Iran’s day, like take a few IRANIAN hostages to exchange for the American ones? We used to do this all the time with the Soviets during the Cold War, exchanging spies on a regular basis. Or how about we threaten to give massive support to rebels inside of Iran unless the Americans are released? We should NOT be paying ransom to the Iranians. As the the Somali pirates, paying ransom only encourages more hostage taking. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Look how many Americans were taken hostage by Iranian-backed militias in Lebanon during the 1980s. And that eventually lead to the “Arms-for-Hostages” scandal. This should end, now, and the Iranians need to know that there will be a stiff price to pay if they take more hostages. If we don’t do this, expect more American hostages to be taken by both Iran and their proxies, especially in Lebanon (by Hezbollah).
Sooner rather than later the dummy westerners that get into situations where they become hostages—minus the Somali pirate thing—will reach a point where even they will be very wary about stepping in it again. In that event what does a nasty regime do? Probably do what North Korea does: invent a crisis.
Some day Iranian oil will be gone or unwanted, so what are these people likely to do? Probably go the NK way. Oil there and in other parts of the world has literally fueled terrorism. We all look forward to the day when the Islamist regimes and assorted thugs no longer weld the oil weapon. But when that day comes it will bring new problems and the West had better be willing and able to do something serious about them.
If you want to talk about “hostages” then you should include:
- every law-abiding citizen who wants to board an airplane, bus or other mass transit mechanism
- every law-abiding citizen who suffers from allergies
- every law-abiding citizen who wants to buy a gun to protect themselves from thugs
- every law-abiding citizen who renews a drivers license and now gets a “SecureID”
Face it, every law-abiding citizen in the world is held hostage to a War on Terror that isn’t a “War” and refuses to identify the source of the “Terror”. There are billions of people across the globe held hostage by the utter uselessness that is Washington DC.
Dear Mr. Ledeen,
Hostages in…..’The Global War’…..??
You are getting closer and closer to the proper description of this conflict, but for some reason you just can’t bring yourself to say the words:
THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR
That is what it really is Mr. Ledeen. It’s clear that you understand this.
Please be bold and start calling it what is. This is an age for bold thinkers and bold truth tellers. Be bold.
THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR
We’re in it.
~ The Infidel Alliance
It isn’t just “islamic.” it also involves radical anti-american forces and countries that have nothing at all to do with Islamism. Like Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia…
But Michael Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia… are not trying to blow up airplanes or flying them in to the World Trade center or giving safe haven to Osama and planting road side bombs and aiding and abetting the Taliban and killing hundreds in Mumbai and chopping off heads are they. I find your response disingenuous in the extreme and Islam defending too.
thanks for your kind words, Pragmatist. The Russians are certainly going all-out (or is it all-in?) to help Syria and Iran, as are the Cubans and Venezuelans. They are co-conspirators with the Iranians and al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad etc. It’s almost impossible to find a case of an Iranian suicide bomber–they prefer to get Arabs to do it–but they are co-conspirators as well.
Did you see the news of the Iranian who blew off his feet in Bankok?
a href=”http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4189434,00.html”>
Dear Dr. Ledeen,
Yes, but it is not Cuba, Russia, Venezuela or Bolivia who are doing the slaughter and killing.
They are the new axis countries of the ISLAMIC WORLD WAR, as were Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Vichy France in WW2, but clearly it is the ISLAMIC SUPREMECIST MOVEMENT that is the driving force of this conflict, as was NAZI Germany. And like NAZI germany the headquarters of this movement, the Islamic Reichstag, is in Mecca, the center of the ideology that drives it.
Thank you for your work.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Infidel: Don’t try that line on the Chechens!
Dear Dr. Ledeen,
94% of the Chechens are Sunni Muslim. The war in Chechnya was basically the Russias efforts to quell an Islamic separatist movement.
This is the the same Islamic separatist movement that wrenched greater India into 3 parts (2 Islamic), that threatens southern Thailand, that vexes Mindinao in the Philippines, is hacking up Nigeria, etc.
This is the same basic strategy as Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, North Africa, etc. The only difference are tactics, uniforms, and the specific ideology driving it (NAZIsm and Islam).
Both ideologies have their evil guide book, Mein Kampf and the Koran, which clearly define their respective supremecist ambitions.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Apologies…..Dr.. Ledeen ….not Mr. Ledeen.
~ The Infidel Alliance
It is important to understand that taking captives, hostages in modern lexicon, is a time honored practice, indeed a central pillar of Islamic Jihad theology.
This tradition, along with forced conversions under penalty of death, rape as a tool of war, looting, decapitation, torture and terrorism were all done by the founder and ‘holy prophet’ of Islam, the barbarian tyrant Muhammed. These were the tools and tactics used when Muhammed began his ISLAMIC WORLD WAR 1400 years ago, and they are the same tools and tactics used in the ISLAMIC WORLD WAR TODAY….
…in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Bali, Australia, the Maldives, Beslan Russia, Xinjiang China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, Cypress, Armenia, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Frankfurt, Malmo, Paris, the Netherlands, Spain, London, New York, Toronto, Seattle, on Delta Airlines, on American Airlines, in Little Rock, Ft. Hood, Florida, University of N. Carolina, Mexico, Jamaica, Caracas, Buenos Aries, the triborder region Argentina/Brazil/Paraguay…..and on, and on, and on.
The ISLAMIC WORLD WAR….inspired by Allah, mandated by Muhammed, commanded in the Koran. It’s real.
~ The Infidel Alliance
there was a big Chinese hostage drama in Sudan, they were rescued by the Chinese, unreported by western media but huge news in China.
It was pretty big news in the Wall STreet Journal, too: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577208623130743472.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I treated myself by watching “West Side Story” last night. Can it really be fifty years since I first saw it?
The Sharks and the Jets continue to play out their absolute separation, in various guises across the globe. These days, it’s the Islamic strain of this oh-so-human “disease” that dominates, albeit there are certainly many other poor souls with their own unique me-verses-you agendas.
So many hostages, so little time!
I bet a lot of old farts are like me, in that they’ve long ago realized that the dream of PHYSICALLY visiting all the places on earth that are so wonderful is too much risk for too little reward. While Rick Steves, my local PBS “guru” who produces TV shows of him tripping around Europe, exists, it’s possible to SAFELY taste such travel “dishes”.
Perhaps Victor Davis Hanson put it best in his latest blog, when he noted that Mexicans tend to drive around throwing garbage out their car window, when Germans pick up after other people. Ah, the old split between order and chaos always happens, in myriad ways.
The other split, it seems to me, that underlies a lot of humanity’s activities, is the one between people who want to expand the economic pie, letting the market decide who gets what, and those who believe there’s a fixed pie, and life is all about fighting for your share by taking from other people.
A slug of “sub” humans sure have a lot of growing up in store for them!
The longest held hostage on the planet – Jonathan Pollard.
Correction – the ‘longest held hostage’ in the world is the Muslim, who has been enslaved and terrorized by Muhammeds savage ideology of Islam for 1400 years. Hands down winner (or loser, rather).
~ The Infidel Alliance
The longest held hostage in the world is the USS Pueblo, seized in the summer of 1968 and still held in No. Korea.
Not gonna take the bait, provocateur.
During the ML King era when the USA was going through its Civil Rights struggle, there were countless white clergy, southern newspaper people and southern judges who risked their standing rather than not do what they knew was right. This is how some define character. This is what is missing from the American Muslims. I know they are there because I know people. The left-wing MSM finds them inconvenient and ergo won’t publicize them
Haiti, outrageous as it is, pulled a hostage scheme during an earthquake crisis…
Um, Michael, didn’t you forget Guantanamo and all the U.S. black sites such as Bagram AFB where prisoners – some actually bad guys but some not – are “disappeared” and some held for years without charges or trail or even access to the Red Cross or any outsiders, family, or lawyers? Some are subjected to “enhanced interrogation” which has killed more than a few. Some are released after years of detention, their health destroyed and in some cases unable to return home. And, most of this is a violation of various international laws and agreements including the the Geneva Conventions.
Aren’t they “hostages” as well?
Oh, wait, we’re Americans and because of “American Exceptionalism” we get a pass because we supposedly mean well and are, well, on the right side of history, right? Yeah, I thought so.
What a relief to be on the right side and to not be accountable under the law. Is this a great country, or WHAT?
one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, eh, OJK? save your moral equivalency, pls. and take the time to learn what Camp Gitmo is really like. Health destroyed? Maybe by all the weight they gain…
Not sure whether to laugh or cry, Michael. Gitmo is now a pleasant retreat where suspected terrorists fatten up on the great food??? Too freaking much. You are a real piece of work.
Funny, no mention of the various violations of international laws though. Oh well.
“Evil is manifest by our inability to conceive of causing it.” Hazrat Inayat Khan
International Law? Oh come on. That’s just another of the extremist’s clichés, like human rights (which human, what rights and when?) and a number of others.
The other side constantly ignores “international law”, whatever that is nowadays.
International law is too vague for you, Cynic?
Let’s get specific then. How about “extraordinary rendition” where U.S. black ops squads kidnapped suspects off the streets of sovereign countries like Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka “Abu Omar”) who was whisked off a street in Italy by the CIA and handed off to Egypt where he was tortured? This was a serious enough violation of Italian law that In June 2005, Italian judge Guido Salvini issued a warrant for the arrest of 13 persons said to be agents or operatives of the CIA. In December 2005, an Italian court issued a European arrest warrant against 22 CIA agents suspected in this kidnapping.
In legal review of other rendition cases in Europe, Swiss councillor Dick Marty, the rapporteur and Chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, concluded, “The elements we have gathered so far tend to reinforce the credibility of the allegations concerning the transport and temporary detention of detainees—outside all judicial procedure—in European countries.” In a press conference in January 2006, he stated “he was personally convinced the US had undertaken illegal activities in Europe in transporting and detaining prisoners.”
Is “outside all judicial procedure” specific enough for you? Just a few examples to take away the vagueness. I could go on but I get the feeling it wouldn’t penetrate your dense skull.
Geneva conventions do not apply. They do not wear uniforms identifying themselves as enemy soldiers. By any military playbook at best that makes them spies.
John, you and Michael both want to focus on some niggling, or in your case, legalistic point and ignore the gist of my post; that the U.S. is equally as guilty of “hostage taking” as any other country in the world.
Michael zeroes in on one bit of minutiae – that I claimed some prisoners health was damaged (well, DUH) – and makes the snarky observation that it must be from eating too much of that good Gitmo cooking (YUM!, all you can eat of the same food that makes America one of the most obese nations in the world) while you want to hide behind some kind of legalism that the people captured weren’t in uniform so we can ignore the Geneva Conventions. Hey, you’d make John Yoo proud! Whatever.
Both of you either are unable or unwilling to speak to the larger, moral point I’m making. We have the wealth, stability, and legal system as well as the traditions and should have could have been an example to the world in our policies over the years but we have often exemplified only hypocrisy and deceit., America doesn’t even have the excuse for it’s illegal policies like Gitmo that it’s a “failed state” as some places like Somalia do (Ok, some people might not agree that America isn’t a “failed state” but just for this discussion. let’s pretend it isn’t).
As far as the four Geneva Conventions are concerned and your point, the Conventions were rules cobbled together over the years that apply in times of armed conflict and seek to protect people who are not or are no longer taking part in hostilities. For example; wounded or sick fighters. prisoners of war, civilians, and medical and religious personnel. And, there’s no doubt that some of the people scooped up in the labyrinths of the Middle East – some completely innocent and turned over the the U.S. for the ransom money or personal vendettas – were innocent civilians and SHOULD have been and COULD have been protected from the abuses they suffered. We know that now, don’t we?
Yet America, the country that wants to present itself to the world as a leader in the rule of law bent or ignored the law with impunity – just like some third-world-tin-pot-banana-republic dictatorship. And, here we have Michael Ledeen with all this why-do-they-hate-us obliviousness wringing his hands about all those nasty people out there taking hostages and attacking us as if we’ve done nothing to deserve this. He seems to be clueless about why all these people might see the U.S. – the country that spends as much as the rest of the world combined on it’s military and has bases all over their countries and has carrier groups circling their waters and feels free to intrude in their lives and syphon off their resources with impunity – as an enemy.
“Evil is manifest by our inability to conceive of causing it.” Hazrat Inayat Khan
OKJ – Most of the prisoners in GITMO are Prisoners of War captured on the battlefield . The Geneva convention states they can be detained as long as the War lasts and the Islamic War on the West is still ongoing. BTW the Geneva convention also allows for people on the battlefield engaging in warfare without wearing uniforms to be summarily executed too so they can count themselves lucky on that score too.
I am saddened by the world situation confronting the United States and I am pessimistic as to whether it will soon change for the better. Certainly the position of the United States in the field of foreign affairs leaves much to be desired. Those nations holding hostages know full well that the present administration in Washington will do whatever it finds expedient, including payment of “ransom” to find a “Bandaid” solution in order to postpone whatever the problem may be as long as it can. The United States was resolute in WWII and in Korea. Today it exhibits all the character of a marshmallow.
I would prefer a team of commandoes to attempt my rescue rather than paying a ransom to these criminal governments. I guess that would actually be more expensive, though not on the long run!
Maybe we should set up a database to record all those people with such a preference, so the authorities could act with more vigor?
Dear ‘John Baker’,
Yes. While we must engage in a vigorous ideological battle against Islam, and eventually thoroughly discredit and destroy its ‘theology’ and ‘morality’, we must also aggressively fight Islam militarily.
That is how we stopped Islam in 1801 – 1804 during the Barbary Wars. We sent a Naval and Marine Corps force that literally crushed the Islamists.
History shows us that Islam will only be stopped when there are civilizations bold enough, srong enough and willing enough to stop it. Sadly, history shows this is always a bloody but necessary enterprise.
Islam won’t stop itself. We must stop it.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Hamas may have thought they got a good deal trading one Israeli soldier for 1,000 “Palestinian” prisoners, but all they did was prove that one Jew is worth 1,000 “Palestinians”!
“It’s an important matter, but we don’t want to talk about it. It’s creepy and humiliating. It makes us do things we don’t want to do.”
No, we do it to ourselves. Our failure of will provides the hostage takers the incentive to take hostages, because taking hostages works when the “victim” fails to work up the gumption to implement a no hostage policy. I said at the time, and still believe, we should have used a Daisy Cutter or two on the US Embassy in Tehran, 1979, and one or two on the Iranian seat of government and called it a day. I notice the Iranians are starting to do hits on Israeli diplomats, apparently in retaliation for the Israelis taking out Iranian nuclear scientists. Tit for Tat. Ultimately the most ruthless wins and the West has been way to magnanimous. I suggest we start taking Egyptians hostage, starting with the Suez Canal: Shut it down. That’ll get their attention.
One thing I know as an American.
No matter what, if I am outside of my borders I will get no support.
You are on your own out there. Disney or Carolina beaches look good this year.
How about a radical solution:
Since almost all American hostages are held by Muslims, capture Mecca, expel the inhabitants, and allow visitors to the city only after the passage of a year without a Muslim terrorist act. Renew this annually.
Radical? Certainly.
Effective? Most certainly.
Dear ‘Pacrim Jim’,
You are one of the few who seem to understand that the ideological ‘Mecca’ for Islam is in fact Mecca. This is where we must focus.
Mecca and the Grand Mosque (Al-Masjid al-Haram) are to Islam as Berlin and the Reichstag were to NAZI Germany, the ideological center of these supremecist totalitarian terror cults.
It is noteworthy that Mecca (and Saudi Arabia at large) is one of the few truly apartheid territories left in the world, religiously sanctioned as such by Islam against us dirty, impure infidels. We did not settle for racial apartheid in South Africa, so why do we stand for religious apartheid in the Middle East?
Fear to speak the truth is the only answer. But we must speak the truth.
Ultimately, the ideological battle, if not the actual battle, will have to be waged in Mecca.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Islam is one of the political Left’s protected species and as such even violently radical mental cases like the Saudi Wahabbis are incapable of racism. Meanwhile on the Right, even saying “blah” gets you fitted with a KKK hood as does “food stamp President.”
In the Left’s weird view of the world, Israel’s greatest crime is success and the greatest achievement in moral terms of the Third World is failure since it is evidence of the West’s racism. The Left apparently believes Orwell’s “1984″ was an instruction manual rather than a dystopian warning.
When Europe was at its most powerful, colonialism was in full swing and Islam could only look at the West with the same terror we view Islam today, the Ottoman Empire did an about face, the Tanzimat rules 1830-60 where they even de-criminalized homosexuality. No more sharia, no more jizya, all citizens were equal and not a squeek out of the mullahs. True the changes only went skin deep, underneath they were still the barbarians of old but when pushed against the wall Islam can change substantially. The problem is they will only do so when pushed.
All the Islam of today is Saudi/Wahabi oil money Islam, a different kettle of fish altogether. When the West finally realizes that they are at war with the Saudi/Gulf states and confiscates all enemy property that flavour of Islam will die down overnight.
And before Europe came to power and Islam was in full jihad against other people, how they appear to the conquered, occupied and slaughtered from the Indian sub-continent to the gates of Vienna?
If we had a real American as president instead of Jimmy Carter, then Tehran and Qom would have been nuked during the first hostage crisis, and we would not be having this conversation now.
But we’ve had one pro-Muslim sellout after another as president since Reagan left office, and the Muslims know they can do whatever they like.
At least for the time being…
It wasn’t just Carter but under Reagan, Baker and Weinberger got the US to turn tail, in Iranian eyes, in 1983 Lebanon after Beirut bombing of the Marines.
This just encouraged the Ayatollahs all the more.
Teheran is staging a proxy Shia/Sunni war in Syria and whoever wins the Iranian backed Regime or the Saudi backed Islamic extremists the West will lose. So far better let them both cancel each other out. This Sunni/Shia conflict is as old as Islam itself and is where Islam and the world will go once the left wing Islamophile moonbats of the West have finished their abject surrender to the Mohammedans.
I recall that one of Jimmy Carters main problems involved hostages. Obama is looking more like Jimmy Carter every day. The only real difference is Obama is trying to get us to forget aboout the hostages, while Carter unwisely raised their profile, with his yellow ribbon campaign, thereby making himself look even worse when he could not get them released.
Dear Michael, they love such dirty deeds. Terrorism is a big part of their nasty nature. The Americans or the Westerners NEVER acted such barbaric acts against the enemy like “selling the hostages or slaughter them, beheading, suicide bombings or the like.” The Muslims and their evil regimes love to provoke you and to blackmail you through the hostages. Pay the millions or they will be beheaded…