Remembering Carter/Mondale

It's the anniversary of America Held Hostage -- Day One.

Some readers here will be too young to recall (ahh... I'm officially old now that I've written THAT), but on 4 November 1979, Iranian radicals took over the U.S. embassy in Teheran and captured the Americans inside. And America did nothing. For days. And weeks. And months.

It made Ted Koppel's broadcasting career, as every night his program would advertise the impotence of American foreign policy during the time of Carter/Mondale malaise by incrementing the number of days America would suffer this barbaric act of war by sitting on its hands.

Orrin Judd memorializes the day appropriately:

The long road to 9-11 is littered with numerous corpses and more than enough blame to go around, but surely America's failure to act when its citizens were taken hostage in Teheran in 1979 must be considered a significant contributor to the perception of Islamic radicals that they could strike us with impunity.

Such are the ideas by which Nobel Prizes can (eventually) be won, and maybe even Senate campaigns in Minnesota.

[Posted at 21:03 CST on 11/04/02] [Link]