(An excerpt from An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, by William Butler Yeats.)
My thoughts on this war?
I think it's been a long time coming.
And here's a few reasons why ...
September 16, 1920
Anarchist Mario Buda kills 33 when his horse-drawn wagon of dynamite
explodes on New York's Wall Street. It was the worst act of terror on
American soil until the Oklahoma City bombing. Officials blamed the
Communists, which launched the century's Red Scare campaign.
July 22, 1946
Jewish extremists, led by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, blow up Jerusalem's
King David Hotel, headquarters for the British Army in Palestine. Ninety die.
The bombing helped lead to the creation of the Jewish state two years later.
July 22, 1968
In the first major airplane hijacking, a PLO splinter group hijacks an El Al flight from Rome
to Tel Aviv. The passengers are eventually freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
September 5 - 6 1972
Black September terrorists attack Israeli Olympians at the Games in Munich. Eleven Israeli
athletes, five attackers, and a German policeman are killed in a botched rescue attempt. The attack
The attack put terrorism in front of 900 million viewers in than 100 countries.
November 4, 1979
Islamic students storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
April 18, 1983
A suicide car-bomber blows up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 17 Americans.
October 23, 1983
Two hundred and forty one U.S. Marines and sailors are killed by a Shiite Muslim suicide truck bomber
at a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The terrorist attack is the most lethal on U.S. military forces.
June 23, 1985
An Air India flight from Canada to India is blown up in the air, leaving 328 people dead
-- the worst non-accidental aviation disaster ever. Sikh separatists are blamed.
December 21, 1988
A bomb explodes aboard a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people
aboard and 11 others on the ground. Two Libyan suspects are being tried for the attack.
February 25, 1993
Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured when a bomb explodes at the World Trade Center in New York City.
The bombing, blamed on Islamic militants, is the first attack of its kind on U.S. soil in the modern era.
March 20, 1995
Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult, launches a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway killing
12 and injuring 5,000. The attack is the first ever with chemical weapons on civilians.
June 25, 1996
A truck bomb explodes outside the Khobar Towers housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel and injuring more than 500 Americans and Saudis.
November 17, 1997
Muslim militants marched into the Temple of Hatshepsut in southern Egypt and massacred 58 tourists.
The incident was one of the deadliest acts of terrorism directed specifically at tourists.
August 7, 1998
Bombs explode at U.S.embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing at least 224 people
including12 Americans. Washington responds with cruise missile attacks on sites
allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden -- a rare public strike on an alleged terrorist.
August 15, 1998
IRA dissidents kill 29 people with a car bomb in the religiously-mixed town of Omagh.
It is the worst-ever terrorist attack in Northern Ireland.
October 12, 2000
Seventeen Americans are killed and dozens injured after a small boat apparently loaded with explosives crashes into the
Navy destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. The explosion blows a 40-foot by 40-foot hole in the ship.
September 11, 2001
Thousands of Americans are missing and presumed dead in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Two hijacked airliners
on a suicide mission crash into New York's twin towers, causing their collapse. A third crashes into the Pentagon,
and a fourth goes down in western Pennsylvania, its mission believed to have been thwarted by passengers.
And then there's The Oval.
At the heart of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO, lies the Oval, a beautiful expansive area of manicured grass and majestic elm trees. Designed in 1909, the Oval contains 65 American Elm trees, many of which have grown along with CSU, as the campus has evolved from a small agricultural college into the distinguished university it is today.
In 1983, Tom Sutherland, a professor at Colorado State University, accepted the position of Dean of Faculty of Agriculture and Food Science at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Two years later, he was kidnapped by gunmen from the Islamic Jihad. Tom spent more than six years in captivity, the second longest period of any western hostage in Lebanon.
Every day for five years I walked through The Oval on CSU campus to get to class and work. Every day for five years I saw the yellow ribbons that were tied around the trunks of those majestic elms. Every day for five years I was reminded that Tom Sutherland was being held captive in Lebanon. Every day for five years I knew that terrorism was real. And every day for five years I knew that terrorism could REACH OUT AND TOUCH EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US.
The disappearance of Atlantis, Pompeii, the Trojan War, Socrates' sip, Cleo's snake, the CruciFIXion, Ceasar, the Inquisition, Nostradamus, slavery, Columbus, the Salem witch hunt, the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, the Alamo, the Civil War, the assasination of Abraham Lincoln, Prohibition, the Mafia, the stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Fat Man and Little Boy, the Red Scare, Roswell, the Bay of Pigs, the assassinations of J.F.K., R.F.K., M.L.K., The Beatles, Apollo 11, the Tet Offensive, The Stones, and TERRORISM -- have always been in my life.
I DO NOT KNOW another world.
You know what I think about this war?
I think that terrorists have been trying to get the attention of the U.S. and it's people for a very long time.
And I think they finally did.
Excerpts from "At Your Own Risk" by Jean and Tom Sutherland.
Kidnapped! Cant be true! Must be dreaming. But Baseball Cap was dragging me out of the car and his pushing and exhortation seemed real enough no dream. There to my left was Sharif wrestling with three of them. Good Lord, Sharif, dont fight with them. Theyll shoot you. But there he was, valiant little fellow, wrestling away, trying to get to me. The vision
is still clear in my mind, and bothered me for my entire captivity. I had really been joking with Sharif about being my bodyguard. But one didnt joke about such matters in Beirut. He had taken me literally. To the rear, I could see Nazih vehemently arguing with his fellow Shiites. To no avail. I was pushed into the passengers seat of the Simcathe four others bundled in and zoom we sped west. Vaguely I was aware of Dr. Ayashs car in front speeding off into the sunset.
Know what Tom Sutherland had to say about bin Laden in a talk he
gave several weeks ago in Fort Collins that my brother attended?
He said that bin Laden is small potatoes compared to the man that orchestrated his kidnapping.
He said that that man is someone to worry about.
Because, unlike bin Laden, that man has state support.
