The date came and went and NO one seem to care…..they were too busy buying bullshit by the gallon…..how sad.
First I need to apologize…..this draft was written and saved to be posted on the day it happened…..well I screwed up….and it is posted a day late….my bad.
Do you remember where you were on 04 November 1979?
I was getting ready for work and heard the first reports on the morning news…..
On November 4, 1979, a group calling itself the Students Following the Line of the Imam stormed the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized control of the compound, and took several dozen American diplomats, Marine guards, and others hostage. Thus began a 444-day ordeal that shocked the world, fundamentally altered the political scene in Iran, and cemented negative perceptions in the West of the country’s Islamic leadership.
Forty years later, the Iran hostage crisis is still critical to understanding the bitter nature of relations between Iran and the United States. It instantly formed a core part of the American narrative ab
out the Islamic Republic as a regime willing to flout international law and universal moral principles, a view that has colored much of U.S. policymaking ever since.
Today, the National Security Archive is posting a small sampling of declassified records that recall that pivotal episode. They include a memo from National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Carter suggesting several hardline actions including replacing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran’s leader and even overt intervention (see Document 07). Carter was not prepared to take up any of these options but they indicate the level of alarm created by events in Tehran.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/iran/2019-11-04/1979-iran-hostage-crisis-recalled
This situation was the beginning of all the stuff that we read about Iran in the news…..the media needs the event and the Iranians to help the Pentagon feed a narrative…..a narrative that has allowed for a 40 year war of words……
Our other national humiliations, from the Alamo to Saigon, have faded from memory or been transformed into noble lost causes. Anger over the hostage crisis has not subsided. For four decades it has grotesquely distorted our approach to the Middle East. Although it ended peacefully with the release of American diplomats, it has had an effect on our national consciousness — and our foreign policy — comparable to the effect of the 9/11 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
The hostage crisis is a lamentable example of how ignorance leads nations to misunderstand each other. It led many Americans to believe that Iranians act out of pure nihilism, cheerfully violating every law of God and man without any reason other than a desire to show how much they hate us. Only years later did it become clear that the opposite was true. The hostage-takers acted to achieve a specific political goal — to stave off what they suspected was an imminent effort by the Americans to reinstall a despised Iranian leader. We might have recognized their motive if we knew our own history.
Our misunderstanding of the hostage crisis still poisons US-Iran relations
After the fall of the USSR we needed a foe to keep the dollars flowing into the Pentagon and Iran fits the bill very well….continue the anger and the money will flow.
I Read, I Wrote, You Know
“Lego Ergo Scribo”
