a brief history of Islamic terrorism

On the advice of a good friend, I've been reading this excellent but very lengthy article by Norman Podhoretz.  This section crystalized in my mind current events.  It's too depressing to even comment on, given the west's anemic reaction to terrorism until 2001. 

 

A brief history if Islamic Terrorism (adapted from the section "Paper Tiger", and only focusing on Americans killed or injured)

1979 - Iranian students break into the American embassy in Tehran and seize 52 Americans as hostages (they are not returned until Reagan's inauguration)

April 1983 – Hizbullah suicide bomber kills 63 Americans and another 120 were wounded at the US Embassy

October 1983 -  Hizbullah suicide bomber kills 241 U.S. Marines in their sleep, wounding another 81 at the American barracks in the Beirut airport.  (Reagan then withdrew the Marines)

December 1983 - American embassy in Kuwait was bombed.    Hizbullah kidnaps and kills Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley, the fourth American to be kidnapped in Beirut, and many more suffered the same fate between 1982 and 1992 (though not all died or were killed in captivity).

Iran Contra begins

September 1984 -  the U.S. embassy annex near Beirut was hit by yet another truck bomb

December 1984 - a Kuwaiti airliner was hijacked and two American passengers employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development were murdered.

June 1985 - Hizbullah operatives hijacked American airline (TWA flight 847), held in Beruit for more than two weeks. During those weeks, an American naval officer aboard the plane was shot, and his body was ignominiously hurled onto the tarmac. For this the hijackers were rewarded with the freeing of hundreds of terrorists held by Israel in exchange for the release of the other passengers.

October 1985, the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship, was hijacked by the PLO working with the support of Libya. One of the hijackers threw an elderly wheelchair-bound American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard

December 1985, five Americans were among the 20 people killed when the Rome and Vienna airports were bombed

April 1986 - a bomb exploded in a discotheque in West Berlin that was a hangout for American servicemen.   Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal executed three U.S. citizens who worked at the American University in Beirut.

December 1988 - the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which a total of 270 people lost their lives.

February 26, 1993 – first WTC bombing, 6 people killed, 1000 injured

April 1993 – Iraqi agents attempt to assassinate George H W Bush

In the years immediately ahead, there were many Islamic terrorist operations (in Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen, and Israel) that were not specifically aimed at the United States but in which Americans were nevertheless murdered or kidnapped.

March 1995 – 2 US diplomats killed and one injured in Karachi, Pakistan

November 1995 - five Americans died when a car bomb exploded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, near a building in which a U.S. military advisory group lived.

June 1996 - the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia attacked by a suicide bomber; 19 airmen killed, and 240 other Americans on the premises were wounded.

August 7, 1998 - car bombs detonated at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing more than 200 people including twelve were Americans.

October 12, 2000 - USS Cole hit by suicide bombers, damaging the ship and killing 17 sailors (wounding 39)

Sept 11, 2001 – suicide attacks on NY and Washington that killing almost 3000 people and changed the way we look at the world (well, at least some of us...)