1980s
TERRORISM IS WHAT THE BAD GUYS DO
The Hizbollah captor of US citizen Terry Anderson found his village shelled by the US battleship New Jersey in 1984, during which he lost his entire family, including his wife, children, grandparents, aunts and uncles. When I asked the kidnappers, in the name of Islam, to release their hostages because they are innocent, one captor replied, “But my wife, children and grandparents who were killed by Americans were also innocent!”1
June 1985: Beirut–Algiers: Shi’ites commandeer TWA Flight 847. Media spectacles deflects from Reagan administration’s clandestine activities in Central America: the one American hostage killed in the Middle East eclipses 10,000 people killed in Central America.
Then in 1986, terrorism peaks: 25 US dead from terrorism, 12,000 more die from slipping… in bathtubs.