Herbert W Armstrong

This TWA affair is not an isolated case [and]...it is not our country alone that is target and victim. In Britain a resort hotel was blown up killing and maiming members of that country's government. In a London department store six random shoppers were killed in purely wanton destruction. In Burma a bomb killed six visiting government officials from South Korea. And just last week an Indian air liner was blown up in mid-ocean killing more than 300 men, women and children. The list is endless, reaching back to the massacre of Israelis at an Olympic village....

Historians like to give names to various eras, the Age of Faith or the Age of Reason. Ours can only be called the Age of Terrorism, for we are no longer dealing with the isolated acts of bandits or deranged killers; those we have always had. What we are living through is a revolt against all ordered society, a war on civilization itself.

The obvious unwillingness on the part of the government to strike back hard and swift at terrorist attacks is frustrating the majority of Americans. The mood was perhaps best expressed by a letter to the editor of the U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, which asked: "What are the claws for that hold the arrows in our Great Seal of the United States? Are they real, or are they just for show?"

Two publications have recently bordered their editorials in black in honor of the victims of the rising tide of terrorist activities levied against U.S. citizens. The first editorial appeared in the July 1 WALL STREET JOURNAL, entitled simply "Robert Dean Stethem, 1961-1985":

Robert Stethem's last hours are described by his seatmate, Ruth Henderson, a 16-year old Australian released shortly afterward:

"They singled him out because he was American and a soldier.... They dragged him out of his seat, tied his hands and then beat him up. I watched as they kicked him in the head. They kicked him in the face and knee caps and kept kicking him until they had broken all his ribs. Then they tried to knock him out with the butt of a pistol — they kept hitting him over the head but he was very strong and they couldn't knock him out.... Then they dumped him back in his seat next to me and left him for ages. I tried to nurse him but there wasn't a great deal I could do. Later they dragged him away and I believe shot him."...

There will be no yellow ribbons for Robbie Stethem. With the release of his fellow hostages finally completed, the nation certainly must join in profound relief at a safe end to their ordeal. But it is no time for celebration. Instead, the Republic should contemplate the courageous death of a young hero, the humiliations just undergone by the nation he served, and the likelihood that there will be more martyrs in the future as terrorism goes unpunished. Indeed, his commander-in-chief should ask himself a private question. In the dead of the night, in response to the hijackers' final demand of no retaliation, the State Department delivered up a carefully worded statement. The question is whether, despite the president's words about justice...in the end this cryptic affirmation will not prove to be exactly what the kidnappers claim, and amnesty for Robert Stethem's murderers.

The second editorial framed in black appeared in the July 15, 1985, edition of the U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, entitled: "Terrorism's Toll on America, 1980-1985." In it, David Gergen, contributing columnist and one-time Reagan staff aide, wrote the following message, which was included in the center of the page, surrounded by the names of all the recent victims of anti-U.S. violence:

The toll rises higher, higher yet — at least 320 Americans, their names shown here, murdered by terrorists since the 1980s began. Except for suicide drivers, not one drop of terrorist blood, apparently, has been spilled in return. When will terrorists pay the same price as their victims? How many more of our citizens must die? How much longer before America strikes back — an eye for an eye? The nation mourns...and waits.

In his July 26 syndicated column, Norman Podhoretz, the editor of COMMENTARY magazine, called President Reagan a "pitifully crippled hawk." But part of the crippling, according to the July 8 WALL STREET JOURNAL, is due to the maze of Congressional restrictions placed upon executive action. This affects not only the war against terrorism but all U.S. military activity:

All the available evidence from the past two U.S. administrations leads to the conclusion that short of total war, the departments of the executive branch responsible for foreign policy — the White House, State and Defense — are highly averse to military action outside the American continent.

In retrospect, Grenada appears to have been an anomaly, a unique event precipitated in large part by the forceful will of Dominica's remarkable prime minister, Eugenia Charles (who, by the way, has just won a big popular vote). The defense buildup of the past four years is intended to fight World War III, an event many senior military officers doubt will occur in their lifetime. Public statements by Defense Secretary Weinberger and senior uniformed officers make it clear that the Pentagon has little interest in deploying its assets in any contingency failing between Grenada and World War III.

The danger in this posture is that it...provides our adversaries with an unacceptably large margin in which to maneuver freely.

The world's terrorists actively operating in margin. So are the Warsaw Pact nations and Libyas that train, finance and promote such insurgencies. This sort of activity puts tremendous pressure on U.S. friends, such as the ASEAN nations, Persian Gulf moderates or even NATO....

At bottom we are convinced that the Pentagon's reluctance to involve itself in mid-level operations is a rational response to the recent behavior of Congress. To a man and woman, Congress will deny that it is damaging our military capability. But we do in fact have a War Powers Resolution that is constantly invoked and debated in these circumstances. And as to the inadequacy of our intelligence-gathering capability that is so talked about on occasions like this or the recent Walker spy case, we have had Mr. Reagan's Executive Order 12333 revising Jimmy Carter's Executive Order 12036, both forged amid a congressional tumult over CIA activities.

Last week the State Department was reduced to saying it had asked the CIA's lawyers to provide an interpretation of these regulations before the administration made any decisions about pursuing Robert Stethem's murderers. The paramount operations consideration in this country today isn't whether it will work, but whether some congressional staffer will be able to say it's illegal. Will a week’s worth of front pages and evening news shows lead with arguments over whether the president has "broken the law"? The commander in chief has become the lawyer in chief.

The series of House votes just prior to the congressional recess attempting to detail the conditions under which the president may take military action in Nicaragua displays how the congressional system naturally tends toward a tangle of legalisms, resolutions and amendments.... With everyone's mind focused by the Beirut kidnapping, we wish the members of Congress would stand back and take a look at the total system of political disincentives they've created for any Pentagon operations planner....

Now is the appropriate time for Congress's responsible members to explicitly raise the issue of modifying or repealing this legislation. If they do not, we are left with the status quo, and the status quo has obviously emboldened this country's enemies. At some point in the future, that continuing danger may threaten not merely 39 of us, but all of us.

The July 15 issue of U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT ran a special cover story on "How The World Views America." It is a twisted tale of admiration, envy and hatred. Over a quarter-trillion dollars in foreign aid since 1945 — what has it produced in the long run? Here are excerpts from that special segment:

The TWA hijacking crisis and its rabidly anti-American roots reminded all sides that the United States stands today as the most admired, most hated nation earth....

Even teenage Moslem extremists who held the plane hostages in Beirut were ambivalent toward their sworn enemies. "They all loved 'Dallas,'" recalls Clinton Suggs, 29, a Navy diver, "They'd lie on our mattresses with us and watch it."...

Around much of the globe, the U.S. is prized for loyalty to its allies — at a cost of some 520,000 American dead since the start of World War II. No less appreciated is the country's generosity in times of severe economic stress — a total of about 238 billion dollars in assistance the last four decades, not counting millions more in public and private help for victims of the current African famine....

Like it or not, there is no escaping U.S. influence. America exports 218 billion dollars' worth of goods a year — 12 percent of the world's total — and imports 341 billion dollars' worth, or 16 percent of global shipments. U.S. corporations employ — or exploit, depending the viewpoint — than 7 million foreign nationals overseas. Some 339,000 foreign students attend college in America. Nearly 524,000 American military personnel are posted in at least 25 nations.

For all the resentment fueled by American wealth, millions abroad seek to live the American dream. In the streets of Moscow, it might be a pair of blue jeans; in Haiti, the latest Michael Jackson tape; in Paris, a fashionable cowboy hat.... Evidence of the way America is esteemed abroad: Millions of people are lined up to come to the United States. Waiting lists for immigrant visas exceed 336,000 in the Philippines; 329,000 in Mexico; 155,000 in India, and 123,000 in South Korea.

Millions of Moslems accept the portrait painted by Iran's Khomeini, depicting America as the "great Satan" responsible for all the woes afflicting the Middle East.... While they may not support extremist terrorism, most people in the Arab world bitterly resent American support of Israel and reflect that resentment in endless burnings of American flags in street demonstrations....

Says James Roach, a professor of government at the University of Texas in Austin: "There are now two generations of Palestinians who have grown up in refugee camps or communities where a childhood litany has centered on how they were driven out and how America helped Israel. If people are barraged every day with the Ayatollah and Qadhafi telling them what Satans we are, a lot of people grow up believing that."...

Even some Israelis are critical. Yitzhak Zeller, assistant director of a Jerusalem youth hostel who left the U.S. two years ago to find his roots in Israel, says: "America today is vile and corrupt. It's new Roman Empire, at its peak of greatness from which it will collapse."...

For impoverished millions eking out survival in the developing world, the United States towers as a prosperous giant locked in a wasteful arms race while they languish in misery.... Still, in the Third World, many envy America's opportunity. Syed Mushtaw Murshed, a civil servant in New Delhi, has seen his chauffeur's son win a scholarship at Princeton. "I've advised him to stay on there," says Murshed. "No other country offers such scope to talent. I'm told I would be a second-class citizen if I went there — but I'd still go."...

Nowhere is Uncle Sam portrayed in more menacing tones than in neighboring Latin America.... Twenty-eight of 77 anti-U.S. terrorist acts last year came in Latin America — the most of any region in the world. "Another Vietnam awaits you," warned leftist guerrillas in El Salvador after murdering 13 people, four of them U.S. Marines, at a sidewalk cafe. Hostility is spreading across a region saddled with a 300-billion-dollar debt that forces nations to export almost 28 billion dollars annually to foreign banks. Says Lucio Gareia del Solar, Argentina's ambassador to the U.S.: "That is a greater danger to the security interests of the U.S. than guerrilla wars in Central America....

Americans are helpful, friendly, kind, cheerful, brave, clean, strong, generous and sometimes even reverent. So why doesn't everybody love us? Because Americans are arrogant, ignorant, immature, suspicious, loud, smug and — above all — rich. Conflicting views about Americans are disturbing not only to people abroad but to Americans themselves....

Americans' ignorance of foreign languages is a crippling factor in dealing with other nations, according to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Vernon Walters. "The failure to communicate with foreigners in their own language prevents them from understanding us as we really are," says Walters, who is fluent in eight tongues. "It makes it difficult for us to project our real purposes to other people."...

It is respect, rather than love, that many Americans want from the world. Ambassador Walters of the United Nations sums up a lifetime of global travels: "If one seeks only to be loved, one cannot do the difficult things that must be done to pursue human freedom. I think, on balance, I would prefer that the world respect more than merely like us. If we could have both, it would be even better.

The U.S. NEWS special concluded with an interview with British journalist Paul Johnson, who explained why "there's a certain quiet glee" over U.S. troubles:

Q. Mr. Johnson, why do you think the world has such a love-hate relationship with the United States?

A. America is the richest, the most powerful country in the world. People in the West know in their hearts they're very dependent on America and are, in their rational moods, grateful. But, if you're dependent on someone you tend to resent them. So when America gets into a bit of difficulty, as over the hostage crisis in Lebanon, there's a certain quiet glee.

Q. But in some parts of the world, dislike of America goes beyond envy —

A. Of course, that applies to the Middle East, probably to a lot of Latin American countries and to a certain number of African countries. There, the hatred of America's power and the feeling that it epitomizes the more-corrupt and brutal side of the West is paramount.

Q. Is that portrait justified?

A. If you look back over the whole of history, you can't come across any other leading power — with the possible exception of Britain in the 19th century — which has exercised its power in the world in such an unselfish, prudent and sensible manner as America has over the past 40 years.

Q. Why doesn't much of the world see America in that light?

A. Partly, I think, because the America projected by its media is not favorable. Take the image of the CIA: What many American newspapers, magazines and television networks project is a kind of worldwide conspiracy by the CIA. I think that is one reason why American aircraft get hijacked and American citizens get kidnapped — because this false image of America is actually believed by humble, ordinary people out there.

Q. Is there anything the U.S. might do to counter these negative feelings?

A. The worst thing is to go around asking to be loved. That invites contempt. The best thing Americans can do is do what they believe right, do it firmly and above all do it quietly without a lot of shouting and arguing. The hate element doesn't come to the surface when America is acting — strongly. It comes when America appears to be weak and indecisive.

The point made by Mr. Johnson about the media and the CIA is especially critical. The July 14, 1985 AIM REPORT newsletter (published by Accuracy in Media) pointed out the connection between a recent story in the WASHINGTON POST and the TWA hijacking. The POST had attributed a car-bombing incident in the Beirut suburb of Bir al Abed, which killed 80 Shiite Moslems, to a counter-insurgency unit trained and supported by the CIA. When the TWA hijackers murdered Navy diver Robert Stethem, one of the murderers was heard to say, in an answer as to why he did it: "Did you forget the Bir al Abed massacre?" Thus the unsubstantiated POST story (which infuriated State Department officials) had possibly put American lives in the Middle East in jeopardy.

Regardless of the exact causes for each incident, America is hated more and more. Her enemies express "quiet glee" at the least, open denunciation and reviling at worst. The passages in Lamentations 1:17, 2:2-3, 13, 15 and 3:46 come to mind, perhaps best summarized in chapter 1:2: "Among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies" (RSV).

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau