When Did the War on Terrorism Really Begin?

[Adam's Apple]

In Hindsight, The War On Terror Began With Salman Rushdie
By Jonathan Rauch, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
February 25, 2005

For most Americans, February 14 was Valentine's Day, the most insipid holiday on the calendar. The date deserves to be better known for another reason. On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader and revolutionary dictator of Iran, pronounced a fatwa (an Islamic legal judgment) against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. It said:

"In the name of Him, the Highest. There is only one God, to whom we shall all return. I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses -- which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran -- and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content are sentenced to death.

"I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr."

...Rushdie's tormentors were offended, but the incident deserves reappraisal with hindsight's benefit. "Looked at in the larger sense," says Pipes, now the director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank in Philadelphia, "it was an act of aggression by the Islamists, an opening salvo in a war to which [Osama] bin Laden and many others have since acceded." More specifically, it represented the emergence of Islamist totalitarianism -- not a religion but a political movement, demanding absolutist rule under Islamic law -- as a global insurrection using terrorism as its instrument.

http://nationaljournal.com/rauch.htm

 

[Annie]

In Hindsight, The War On Terror Began With Salman Rushdie
By Jonathan Rauch, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
February 25, 2005

For most Americans, February 14 was Valentine's Day, the most insipid holiday on the calendar. The date deserves to be better known for another reason. On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader and revolutionary dictator of Iran, pronounced a fatwa (an Islamic legal judgment) against the British novelist Salman Rushdie. It said:

"In the name of Him, the Highest. There is only one God, to whom we shall all return. I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses -- which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran -- and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content are sentenced to death.

"I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr."

...Rushdie's tormentors were offended, but the incident deserves reappraisal with hindsight's benefit. "Looked at in the larger sense," says Pipes, now the director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank in Philadelphia, "it was an act of aggression by the Islamists, an opening salvo in a war to which [Osama] bin Laden and many others have since acceded." More specifically, it represented the emergence of Islamist totalitarianism -- not a religion but a political movement, demanding absolutist rule under Islamic law -- as a global insurrection using terrorism as its instrument.

http://nationaljournal.com/rauch.htm

I believe the War on Terror began with the Afghan War. Now the Terrorism War, well that's a whole lot older than 1989. In the modern era, if we exclude Israel being attacked in one form or another, I guess it would be when Iran took our hostages. Of course we could go back to the Crusades, but that is what they would like-all of us back to the Stone Age.

 

[Fmr jarhead]

You could go further back to the Iranians taking US hostages from the US Embassy....or further, yet to the '72 Olympics with the kidnapping of the Israeli olympic athletes.

You can go back further, very easily...but for me, I would place the date as 18 April 1983.

Look it up yourself, and see why that is my date for the fight on terrorism.

 

[Annie]

You could go further back to the Iranians taking US hostages from the US Embassy....or further, yet to the '72 Olympics with the kidnapping of the Israeli olympic athletes.

You can go back further, very easily...but for me, I would place the date as 18 April 1983.

Look it up yourself, and see why that is my date for the fight on terrorism.

I was pretty sure of this, but still never hurts to check:

suicide bombing of the United States Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon was the deadliest attack on a US displomatic mission to that time, and is seen by some as marking the beginning of anti-US attacks by Islamic groups.

I'll stick with the Tehran embassy, which emboldened their war for attacks like Beirut and the Lockerbie bombing. Any way we look at it, they have been at war with us for a lot longer than vice versa.