brener@milrat.DEC (11/08/84)
i heard over Nationa Public Radio last week that there are three hostages in Lebanon, held since spring. Family members have decided to finally speak up after the State Dept. has asked them not to release this info to the public. They finally decided to speak up after not seeing any results for may months. Has this information made it to other media? steve b Thu 8-Nov-1984 10:29 EDT
lat@stcvax.UUCP (Larry Tepper) (11/14/84)
The following editorial was printed in the Sunday, Nov. 11, edition
of Boulder's Daily Camera newspaper. Reprinted w/o permission.
Three who aren't better off
It is difficult to write anything about the three American hostages
who were kidnapped off the streets of Beirut last spring without sounding
bitter.
So much was written and said on television every day about the
hostages taken at the U. S. embassy in Tehran five years ago. It is a
good bet that most Americans today don't even know hostages have been
taken in Lebanon.
Why so much noise then and so little now? What about all the respect
our added firepower is supposed to have bought us in the years since?
Why isn't the State Department on television every night telling
us about the efforts being made to free these Americans?
One this is sure. Jeremy Levin, William Buckley and the Rev.
Benjamin M. Weir are not better off now than they were four years ago.
They are prisoners of The Party of God, a group composed of followers
of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. If they are walking tall, they
are doing it with blindfolds over their eyes.
Jeremy Levin was Middle East bureau chief for Cable News Network.
William Buckley was political officer in the Beirut embassy. Benjamin
Weir, a Presbyterian minister, had lived in Beirut for 21 years. He
was snatched off the sidewalk while walking with his wife.
It is hard to believe that our "big stick" foreign policy has
yielded so little for these three Americans. The Reagan administration
says nothing. The State Department says only that the three are still
alive.
Efforts to free these men are now in the hands of their own families,
although CNN made a strong attempt earlier. A network vice president
said he met with 47 different groups in Beirut during an eight-week
period, but nothing was resolved.
The families are concentrating their efforts on Syrian President
Hafez al-Assad. The are convinced that if anyone can influence The
Party of God outside of Iran, it is Assad.
The key words are "if anyone." The window of vulnerability is
just as wide open in our policy of international bluster as it was
when we had no bluster at all. In fact, the situation may be worse.
We can't train our budget busting weapons systems on a handful
of God-crazed fanatics in the rubble of Beirut. Terrorist make a
mockery of our "Peace Through Strength."
Patient diplomacy, a global policy of respect for all humankind,
are not in our arsenal today. Instead, these families must beg for
the lives of their loved ones from Assad. Our prayers go with them.
--
Couldn't we give a LITTLE thought to... Strength through peace?
{ihnp4 hao philabs sdcrdcf ucbvax!nbires}!stcvax!lat Larry Tepper
Storage Technology, MD-3T, Louisville, CO 80028 303-673-5435