Someone besides the victims and their families should suffer for the terrorist attack Thursday on a Navy ship that left 17 sailors dead and 33 others wounded. President Clinton has said that the instigators of this latest incident of terrorism
Someone besides the victims and their families should suffer for the terrorist
attack Thursday on a Navy ship that left 17 sailors dead and 33 others
wounded.
President Clinton has said that the instigators of this latest
incident of terrorism against the U.S. military, the worst since the bombing of
an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that claimed 19 lives, won’t go
unpunished. “We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable,”
he vowed.
Those aren’t exactly fighting words, but they’re sensible words.
In the volatile Middle East, the last thing that’s needed is more
saber-rattling and incendiary rhetoric like that from Muslim terrorist leaders
who are urging their followers to attack U.S. and Israeli targets in reaction
to deaths of Palestinians in the recent fighting with Israel.
However, the
burning temptation to exact vengeance for the suicide bombing of the USS Cole
as the destroyer sat refueling off the coast of Yemen should be tempered only
until the perpetrators of Thursday’s attack can be identified. Then the U.S.
should strike back with deadly force.
An eye for an eye is a message
that’s lost on extremists who put their maniacal thirst for blood ahead of
rational behavior. Nevertheless, the war-like taking of American lives can’t be
allowed to pass unpunished.
