Anniversary of the Iran-Sponsored Murder of 241 Americans in Lebanon

Today is the anniversary of the 1983 Iran-sponsored bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 American soldiers and military personnel. As I wrote in “The Jihad against America and How to End It”:

In 2003, a U.S. federal court found that “the terrorist group Hezbollah carried out the attack at the direction of the Iranian government.” In 2004, as if to add an exclamation point to that finding, Iran erected a monument to commemorate the suicide bombing and its martyrs:

“Amid chants of 'Death to America,' the stone monument, which is located at Tehran’s Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, was unveiled in 2004 by a committee of the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign. Some of the participants were dressed as suicide bombers while others claimed to have signed up more than twenty-five thousand martyrdom-seeking volunteers.”

Monuments may not be arguments, but they sometimes speak volumes.

America's refusal to eliminate the Iranian regime speaks volumes, too. It says that many Americans care more about not being branded "intolerant" or "interventionist" or the like than they do about defending themselves and their loved ones against Islamic regimes that seek to kill them for “Allah.”

When will a sufficient number of Americans demand that the U.S. government act in accordance with its knowledge about the Iranian regime and end this constant and expanding threat? With apologies to Golda Meir: when a sufficient number of Americans love themselves and their children more than they hate being called names.

Related:

• The Jihad against America and How to End It
• The Causes of War and Those of Peace

About Craig Biddle

Craig is cofounder and editor of The Objective Standard, cofounder and director of education at Objective Standard Institute, and executive director of Prometheus Foundation. He is the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It; Rational Egoism: The Morality for Human Flourishing; and the forthcoming Moral Truths Your Parents, Preachers, and Teachers Don’t Want You to Know. He is currently working on his fourth book, “Thinking in Principles.”

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