TIMID UNCLE SAM GETS HIT AGAIN: Once again America is held hostage. The crisis over the fate of the crew and passengers of TWA Flight 847 has left the American public frustrated and angry. People are demanding that the government "do something" to prevent recurrences of terrorist acts against American citizens and property. Sifting through the amount of news material, interviews and analyses on this latest outrage, one main point is evident: Because it has failed repeatedly in the past to retaliate against acts of terrorism — often despite avowals to do so — the U.S. was a ripe target for the latest hijacking. And unless the government can summon the will to deal a punishing blow to terrorists this time, more disasters are certain to come. First of all, here are excerpts from an editorial titled "The Next Hijacking," which appeared in the June 18 WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Various sages have repeatedly concluded that for a variety of complex political reasons, the U.S. can do nothing about terrorism. If that is so, then Americans should get one thing clear in their minds while they watch this current drama play out in Beirut: This is far from the last hijacking or terrorist incident involving American civilians or soldiers. Its repetition is a sure thing....
Among the repeated events that allow the terrorists to draw that conclusion [that anti-American terrorism is a productive political instrument] one stands out: the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed some 240 U.S. soldiers. After that, the U.S. left Lebanon. For the operation's planners, there were no costs. At the time of the Marine-barracks bombing, we urged a retaliatory strike at the Bekaa Valley town of Baalbek, which intelligence sources had identified as the base of the bombers. More generally, we suggested that President Reagan order military strikes against Syrian military installations inside Lebanon. It is certainly plausible to believe that if this had been done then, Americans would be less likely to be taken hostage in the Middle East today.
Yes, we understand. In a retaliatory strike it would be impossible to target only the guilty; civilians might die.... Americans now held prisoner in Lebanon might also perish. And of course the argument will be made — is now being made — that Lebanon's feuding Moslem factions are now so splintered that the U.S. could never correctly assign guilt for the kidnapping. This is a philosophy of criminal jurisprudence that is perhaps more appropriate to Algonquin, Ill. [where several of the passengers were from]. We're talking about Lebanon. In a situation like Lebanon, the answer is to make someone responsible.
Shiite radicals have made Americans the prime targets of their attacks. The list of assaults is growing — and tragically, the U.S. hasn't responded forcefully to any of them. Here is a summary of anti-U.S. Shiite activity, as reported in the article "Mideast Terror Strikes Americans " in the June 24 issue of U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT:
The latest assault by pro-Iranian militants, who see martyrdom as a ticket to salvation, came after a number of attacks on U.S. targets in the last two years. Hijackers forced a Kuwaiti airliner to Teheran last December and murdered two American officials to press demands for the release of Shiites held by Kuwait. The same group also took responsibility for a bombing in March that killed 18 near a U.S. air base in Spain at a restaurant that is popular with Americans. Earlier attacks caused 63 deaths in a suicide bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April, 1983, and 241 U.S. servicemen died in an attack on the Marine barracks six months later.
There are also seven other Americans captured in Lebanon over the past several months who are still unaccounted for. Former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr. said on June 19 that "we knew" who was responsible for the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks but simply failed to coordinate an effective response to the assaults. He further said that U.S. failure to make swift retribution results from the idea that "our hands will be dirtied" if innocent lives are lost. Even President Reagan seemed to reflect this attitude in his June 18 news conference when he said that unless we could "pinpoint the enemy" any retaliatory attack could mean "you're a terrorist, too."
The U.S. may try to take the "high moral ground" in the Lebanon quagmire, but Americans fail to realize there are few innocents in the more radicalized communities. The women in the towns and slums harbor their gun toting husbands and sons; the children are inspired and trained to be future terrorists. Perhaps the U.S. government should have learned a lesson from the recent NBA basketball finals: The Los Angeles Lakers were finally able to defeat their old nemesis, the Boston Celtics, by abandoning their "finesse" game and playing Boston's "physical" style of basketball. Not pretty, but it worked.
As it stands now, the U.S. has no reputation for protecting its interests and citizens — a first and foremost responsibility of any government. America is a soft touch. Since the Shiites demanded the return of 700 of their captives in Israel, why didn't they hijack an El Al plane? Here is what Barnard L. Collier had to say in an article "U.S. Criticized for Failure to Hit Back at Terrorists" in the June 19 WASHINGTON TIMES:
It is already established administration policy under National Security Decision Directive 138, signed by President Reagan on April 13, 1984, to take a series of measures to combat terrorism throughout the world. These include preemptive strikes, punitive retaliation, and going to the source of the terrorism if it is sponsored by a particular state. Jeffrey Record, a senior fellow of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and a former legislative assistant for national security affairs for Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., said that "punitive action be very easy. It's all a matter of the will to take the action."...
Edward Luttwak, senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic Studies and a severe critic of the Defense Department, said: "In a strategic response, one can never deal with problems on a case-by-case basis. The question is how to begin to create the idea that you don't want to attack United States planes. The dog that didn't bark in this whole affair is the El Al air liner that didn't get hijacked. If the hijackers wanted the Israelis to release prisoners, why didn't they hijack an El Al plane? The answer is that they didn't hijack El Al because the Israelis have built a reputation of the sort the United States must build up. They know you can out-terrorize terrorism."
Mr. Luttwak said hijackers who might contemplate piracy against Israeli planes must consider the following: "They will probably have to face a prompt rescue of the hostages the first place the plane sits long on the ground. There won't be several days of diddling around. The planes are secure with some sort of sky marshals, and the Israelis do not allow third parties, like the Greeks, to take care of their airport security. There will be some form of rather swift retaliation, against the hijackers or their protectors. There is individual pursuit of individual hi jackers. An Identa-kit picture is made of them and is kept on file for as long as 10 years. The terrorist must worry that one day while he is on the beach on the Riviera he will be murdered."
On the other hand, Mr. Luttwak said, "The U.S. record in hijacking is really quite pure. The U.S. has not retaliated for any of these outrages; they have not pursued individuals."
The TWA terrorists weren't dumb. They knew that with the hijacking incident played out every night on American television, with their spokesmen interviewed by correspondents and "anchor-people," that their cause would get a hearing before millions.
And, of course, the highly competitive news media wouldn't dare consider a news blackout on sensitive matters — an act that would deprive the hijackers of the forum they want so much. Pentagon spokesman Michael Burch, in fact, has complained that the networks are in a race with each other to report on any suspected contingency plans to rescue the hostages. ABC News even chartered a plane to fly over the Sixth Fleet positioned off the Lebanese coast. "Our plane was not intercepted and we plan to continue aggressive news coverage," said an ABC director. Mr. Burch added that "there seems to be more respect for next fall's scripts for 'Dynasty' and 'Dallas' than there does for U.S. contingency plans."
The United States government continues to fumble around without any clear policy response to terrorism. It is further hamstrung by interdepartmental bickering, hesitancy on the part of the military (burned badly in the bar racks explosion) and an emaciated intelligence operation. This was explained in the June 20 article "A Clear Plan to Handle Terrorism Still Eludes Divided Reagan Camp" in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Ronald Reagan, for all his tough talk, has failed to develop a coherent anti-terrorism policy.... Administration officials say they probably lost any chance for a quick rescue mission to free the Flight 847 hostages after the first 48 hours. Such a move was discussed but was ruled out because of technical problems. There is a continuing debate within the administration, however, over whether the U.S. should apply force if the crisis drags on....
Administration officials agree that as long as saving hostage lives is the top priority, the U.S. will have limited options in handling terrorist incidents. A tougher policy would require the U.S. to subordinate the welfare of the hostages to broader national concerns — a painful step for any U.S. president....
Quarrels within the administration have hindered development of a coherent anti-terrorism strategy. The reaction to the October 1983 bombing of Marine headquarters in Beirut, for example, was a case study in bickering and indecision. Shortly after the bombing, U.S. intelligence identified a terrorist target in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. There was a top-level debate on Nov. 8, 1983, two weeks after the bombing, about whether to attack the target. But President Reagan was leaving that day on a trip to Korea, so officials decided to postpone a decision until he returned a week later.
When he got back, disagreements between the State Department and the Pentagon over the operation continued, and the U.S. at the last minute backed out of plans for a Joint reprisal raid with France. The French went ahead on their own on Nov. 17. There never has been any American retaliation for the bomb that killed 241 American Marines....
Lack of reliable intelligence also continues to hinder the U.S.... The administration has tried in recent months to push wary CIA and military officials into tougher anti-terrorism programs, including closer links with other nations' spy services.... The CIA, for example, resisted for months the arguments by some administration hard-liners that the U.S. should mount preemptive operations. The agency viewed such tactics as perilously close to assassination, a tactic that helped bring the CIA into disrepute in the 1970s....
Administration officials believe that developing a sound antiterrorism policy has been difficult because elements of such a policy go against the American character. "Our virtues are frequently our vulnerabilities," contends Noel Koch, a deputy assistant secretary of defense who helps supervise counterterrorism planning. "The value we place on an open society is exploitable. Our respect for human life is exploitable. And so there is question of how to maintain these values and yet defend ourselves. There are no happy choices available."
In one way, it is incredible that one of the Shiite warlords, Nabih Berri, should be acting as guarantor of the passengers taken off the TWA plane and performing a role as some sort of interloculator between the hijackers and the U.S. His Amal Shiite gunmen, shortly before the hijacking, had launched a bloody foray into the same Palestinian camps that the Christian Phalangists did in 1982 when the Israelis weren't looking. At least another 600 Palestinians were brutally murdered. But where was the Western press this time? asked the NATIONAL REVIEW in its June 28 issue:
September 1982: Christian Phalangist militiamen massacre hundreds of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. The Israeli army, charged with guarding the camps, intervenes only after the slaughter is well under way. An international uproar ensues during which Israel is compared with Nazi Germany, and many American journalists (Anthony Lewis springs to mind) accuse the Begin government — Defense Minister Sharon, in particular — of complicity in the killings. Indignation flourishes. Some...link America, by implication, to the massacre. An Israeli commission investigates the whole matter.
May 1985: Shiite militiamen, aided by Shiite elements of the Lebanese army and also by the Syrian government, massacre hundreds of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila. But this time there is no outrage. The Syrian government will not appoint a commission to investigate its role in the atrocities. There is no international clamor. Not a word has been heard from Anthony Lewis or for that matter from Jesse Jackson, who never fails to bring up the 1982 killings during any discussion of Israel. Why not? Because they have no way of linking Israel or the U.S. to the camps today, and no way of blaming us for the slaughter.
Flight 847 Hijacking Only a Symptom
In a broader sense, more than the United States is held hostage in the Middle East. So are moderate Arab leaders, such as Jordan's King Hussein. The radicals are determined to shoot down any pretensions at peace with Israel that the King has floated recently. The enemies of peace comprise two camps, closely interlinked. First there is the loose state cooperative of Libya, Syria and Iran. They coordinate their efforts more closely than ever, as the article titled "Libya, Syria and Iran Coordinate Schemes to Strike U.S. Targets, Arab Sources Say," also from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (June 19), shows:
While attention is focused on the hijacked American jetliner held hostage here, a much broader terrorism network aimed at America and moderate Arabs is taking shape in the Middle East.... The foreign ministers of Libya, Syria and Iran met in January in Tehran and laid the groundwork for a new "anti-American strategy," Arab sources close to the Syrian government say. The countries agreed to escalate terrorism against U.S. interests and personnel on a world-wide scale, the sources say....
Syria and Libya also agreed to whip up Palestinian terrorism by radical Palestinian factions opposed to Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. Mr. Arafat has angered the radicals by his apparent willingness to participate in a peace process led by moderate Arabs and the U.S. Iran, the sources say, pledged to encourage terrorism by Moslem extremists.
The second enemy of peace is an upsurge in Islamic fundamentalism. Aroused Shiites, urged on by Libya, Syria and Iran, have declared war on the forces of moderation in the Middle East. Karen Elliott House, foreign editor of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, wrote the following in a background piece, "The West Will Remain Hostage," in her newspaper's June 20 edition:
This week the headlines from the Middle East are about hijackers and hostages. A week ago it was peace plans and PLO politics. And a few weeks earlier it was an assassination attempt on the emir of Kuwait and bombings (the first in modern memory) in the capital of the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
All of these events reflect a fundamental truth: In the turbulent Middle East, the men and matters of the moment are but little sailboats bobbing on the waves. Beneath the surface lurks the sea monster of radical Islam whose long tentacles of terrorism can reach up at any instant to snatch the sailboats and their captains.
The princes and presidents of the Middle East with their armies and their bodyguards, their palaces and their riches surely ought to feel safer than some unarmed American traveler on a TWA jetliner. But they don't...because the terrorists are primarily pursuing them. In short, the golden geese of the Middle East are sitting ducks — maybe even dead ducks....
Last week' s hijackings once again underlined the impotence of America and her moderate Arab allies in the face of Islamic terrorism. But Arab rulers already understood the score: In the battle for the Middle East, radical Islam is 3 for 3. First they drove America out of Iran. Then they blasted the U.S. out of Lebanon. Finally, they chased Israel out as well.
All this has consequences for America far beyond Lebanon.... The goal of radical Islam is to drive all Westerners and all traces of Western influence from the — region — including pro-Western Moslem rulers. In the eyes of true believers, America and Israel are not causes of the Mideast's problems; they are merely symptoms. The real trouble, as the true believers see it, is rulers who have betrayed Islam and allowed "imperialists" and “Zionists" to penetrate the Middle East.
For instance, the first words broadcast from the cockpit of TWA 847 last week included a derisive swipe at the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and the Palestine Liberation Organization. "Jerusalem is calling you, you that claim yourselves Moslems.... To the people who surrendered to Israel, to (Egyptian President) Mubarak and (PLO Chairman) Arafat, (Jordan's King) Hussein and Saddam (Iraq's president), to the usurpers of the thrones, Jerusalem can only be liberated by the hands of the true believers...."
The true believers, of course, have been joined and used by terrorists with other agenda, including the governments of Iran, Syria and Libya, who each have their own reasons for wanting to terrorize Americans and Israelis. But that merely compounds the risk to pro-Western rulers, like Jordan's King Hussein, who want to broaden Mideast peace. For not only do the true believers want to eliminate them for cooperating with the "imperialist infidels" and "Zionists," but so do their political enemies such as Syria. As a result, the bloodshed and violence in Lebanon almost certainly imperil peace prospects and further feed fundamentalists' faith that they can eventually eliminate Western leaning Islamic leaders the same way they eliminated the shah of Iran....
The best guess is that the Middle East will remain a slaughterhouse for America and her friends for years to come. For America is as much a hostage of radical Islam now as five years ago when 52 American diplomats were held hostage by the ayatollah's Islamic zealots.
It should be plain that, more than ever, the United States is in no position to douse the cauldron of violence in the Middle East. That may have to be the task of a future European "Third Force."
ON THE WORLD SCENE
Worldwide Church of God