With all that is happening in the Middle East and with many people focused on September 11th and Osama bin Laden it is sometimes easy to forget how many times America has been attacked since 1979. The constant in every one of these attacks on America and Americans is “Muslim extremists”.

November 1979: The United States embassy was seized by Muslim extremists and for 444 days they held 52 Americans hostage. This is the one that’s seems to have started the ball rolling. Perhaps if we had gone in early and hard, things would have been different, then and now.

April 1983: Our embassy in Beirut was bombed by Muslim extremists, killing 16 Americans.

October 1983: U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport were bombed by Hezbollah, killing 241 Marines.

December 1983: Muslim extremists, killing 5 and injuring 80, bombed The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait.

September 1984: The U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut was the site of another Hezbollah truck bomb, this one killing 24 people, including 2 of our servicemen.

June 14, 1985: TWA Flight 847 out of Athens was hijacked by Hezbollah (see a trend?) flown to Beirut. When their demands for a prisoner / hostage exchange were not met, the Muslims shot U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac.

October 1985: The Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, was hijacked by the Libyan supported Palestine Liberation Front and 69-year-old American Leon Klinghoffer was shot him and his body was tossed overboard.

December 1985: Airports in Vienna and Rome were bombed, again by Muslim extremists, killing 20 people, 5 of them Americans.

April 1986: Libyan backed Muslim extremists bombed a discotheque in West Berlin, injuring hundreds and killing 2, including a U.S. soldier.

December 1988: Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Libyan backed Muslim extremists, killing 270 people.

February 1993: The war moves to American soil with Muslim extremists bombing the World Trade Center, wounding more than 1,000 and killing 6.

November 1995: 5 U.S. military servicemen are killed at the U.S. military headquarters in Saudi Arabia by a car bomb, once again courtesy of Muslim extremists.

June 1996: 19 American servicemen are killed and injuring hundreds are injured by a truck bomb at the Khobar Towers military complex, again by Muslim extremists.

August 1998: al-Qaida enters the world stage, killing 224 and injuring thousands with truck bombs at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

October 2000: 17 U.S. sailors on the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole are killed when it is attacked by al-Qaida.

Sept. 11, 2001: Nearly 3,000 Americans are killed by al-Qaida attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

These attacks – against America and Americans and by Muslim extremists - have been occurring for almost 30 years, under the watch of both Democratic and Republican presidents. Negotiations have proved futile, appeasement has failed and perhaps we need to accept the fact that a large group of people want us dead and show no signs of stopping, unless stopped.

Without a doubt, mistakes of omission and commission have been made by president after president, including Presidents Bush (commission) and Clinton (omission). However, the focus now needs to be on protecting America, Americans and American interests here and abroad. Let’s quit pretending that we are dealing with rational people who only need to be shown the value of working together in peaceful coexistence. The time for trying to “understand and work with” Muslim fanatics has passed and the time to protect ourselves is here.