Let’s start on April 18, 1983. What, over 20 years ago, you ask? Sadly, yes, Americans were already dying in the radical Islamic war against us, although we were asleep at the switch and didn’t realize the evil that was bearing down upon us and seeking our destruction.
On April 18, 1983, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, was bombed, killing all 63 occupants of the building, including 17 Americans. On October 23, 1983, over 240 U.S. Marines were murdered in their barracks in Beirut by a truck bomb at 6:22 on Sunday morning.
Move ahead to December 1988. Pan Am Flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, was blown to fragments by a terrorist bomb. The death toll was every person on the plane, 259 innocent people, plus eleven innocents on the ground.
In February, 1993, the terrorists got ambitious and tried to blow up the World Trade Center in New York. They miscalculated their logistics and had to settle for a disappointing toll of six people dead.
It is said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Left unaccountable to the United States for their evil actions, the terrorists would return.
On June 25, 1996, Islamic terrorists exploded a fuel truck at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia at Building #131 in the housing complex. This eight story building mostly housed United States Air Force personnel from the 4404th Fighter Wing. In all, 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi were killed and 372 wounded .
Facing no consequences from the United States in the wake of these atrocities, Islamic terrorists grew bolder and stepped up the pace of their brutal attacks. In August 1998, terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, resulting in 224 dead.
On October 12, 2000, the USS Cole was bombed in the water as it refueled in Yemen. Seventeen U.S. sailors died.
On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center was again attacked in New York City, NY, this time by radical Arab Islamic terrorists hijacking jet airplanes. The Pentagon was attacked in similar fashion, and United Airlines Flight 93 went down in a Pennsylvania field because the courageous Americans onboard fought to defend their lives and country.
Nearly 3,000 innocent Americans were slaughtered in little more than an hour on 9/11.
The people of the United States were forced to realize that, although we had not sought war, war had long ago been declared upon us by hate-filled fanatics. War had been thrust upon us by Islamic fanatics both dangerous in their blind hatred and determined in their will to destroy us.
The beheadings of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson showed us the evil, cowardly depths to which our enemy will sink.
And so, we fight. We fight to protect our homeland, our families and loved ones, our way of life, and our freedom. America began its stand in Afghanistan, with stunning success, in a battle that to date has cost 135 brave American lives. In Iraq, the tragic toll changes daily; today’s official tally was 1,018 of American’s courageous young people.
Using basic arithmetic, the above record tallies nearly 5,000 innocent American lives--men and women of the United States who have been slaughtered by the followers of radical Islam, all in the name of Allah. Being such religious folks, they would dearly love to see many millions more of us infidel Americans dead.
Americans are fully alert to the danger now, as a nation and a people. The U.S. military and its alliance of coalition forces is doing the hard work of ensuring that the butchering of Americans has become a much more difficult task for the Islamic killers.
Health care, jobs, the economy, certainly are all important issues facing us today. But if Denver or St. Louis or Milwaukee vanishes under a mushroom cloud, I doubt many of us will be debating Medicare benefits. If Chicago or New York or Los Angeles suffers a smallpox epidemic, not many Americans will be fretting about the quarterly job statistics.
There is no luxury of denying that we are in a fight for our survival against the Islamic murderers. It’s time to re-elect a strong leader, one who has proven he knows how to take the fight downtown on the terrorists’ turf.
This is real. This is war. Help defend America by voting for President Bush.
