![]() ![]() The worst of these was indirectly caused by Reagan, specifically his incomprehensible - to the Democrats - competitiveness in the race. And I determined to do my small part to right the ship. I knew something had gone wrong with the country - an impotence embodied by the man in charge of it, President Carter. When the wife of State Department hostage Bruce Laingen, Penelope Laingen, recommended we “tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree” - the refrain of a 1973 Tony Orlando hit - and people actually started complying, I became angrier. Instead, night after night, all I kept seeing were Nightline’s subtitle, “America Held Hostage - Day _,” Jimmy Carter’s befuddled face, and the Iranians shouting, “Death to America!” ![]() Marines march into Tangier on a similar hostage rescue mission. In my head I replayed the exuberant scene from John Milius’s classic The Wind and the Lion (1975), where a platoon of U.S. So, every day I’d rush home to my off-campus apartment and devour the TV news, expecting an imminent military response from our president. Up to that time, as a University of Maryland English major, I cared only about film, literature, and girls -not necessarily in that order - with zero interest in the nuances of international diplomacy. It was on November 4, 1979, when a group of radical Islamic Iranians smashed into the United States Embassy and took 66 Americans hostage. ![]() I can remember the exact moment I became politically aware. ![]()
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