Terrorism †Wake Up America! :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

Terrorism Wake Up AmericaAmerica, wake up Thats what we think we heard on the 11th of September 2001 and maybe it was, but I think it should have been Get Out of Bed In fact, I think the alarm time has been buzzing since 1979 and we have continued to hit the snooze button and roll over for a few more minutes of peaceful sleep since then. It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a religious and political upheaval when a assort of Iranian students attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright attack on American soil it was an attack that held the worlds most powerful country hostage and deactivate a Presidency. The attack on this sovereign US embassy set the stage for the events to follow for the next 23 years. America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Viet Nam experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then President Carter had to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the d esert. The ill-fated delegacy ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of Americas inability to deal with terrorism. Americas military had been decimated and downsized / right sized since the end of the Viet Nam war. A indisposed trained, poorly equipped and poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission doomed from the start. Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and killed passim the Middle East. America could do little to protect her citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US soil continued. In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with elevated explosives was set into the US Embassy compound in Beirut. When it explodes, it kills 63 people. The alarm went off again and America hit the Snooze Button once more. Then unspoiled six short months after a large truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main provide of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut. 241 US servicemen are ki lled. America mourns her dead and hit the Snooze Button once more. Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and America continues her slumber. The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept.