Marine CPL Stephen J. Crowley, first GWOT Casualty

Corporal Steven J. Crowley, United States Marine, was shot once through the skull, just above his left ear, at approximately 1:10 p.m., local time, while guarding the American Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, on November 21, 1979.  At approximately 3:25 p.m. that same day, Cpl. Crowley, a chisel-faced, 6 foot 6 inch, blonde 19 year old Marine, from Port Jefferson Station, Long Island, NY, and a chess enthusiast and cross country runner who graduated from Comsewogue High School, was pronounced dead in the embassy vault, after an oxygen tank that was providing his threadbare connection to life ran out.  There was no way to get him to a hospital because of the siege by radical male Muslim student protestors (members of a group later to be funded by Osama bin Laden).

Corporal Steven J. Crowley Park is well known in these parts. It is not large, nor does it boast a sports field or even a swing set.  It contains memorial plaques and a flag pole as straight and proud as the young man whose life was the first taken in our Global War on Terrorism. 

Each November, Cub Scout Troop 120, of the Boyle Road Elementary School, removes the fall leaves from the corner property at Old Town Road and Greenhaven Blvd.  I was there this past fall (unlike the fall before it, when I was on my way home from a years’ tour in Iraq) with my wife and our four boys, the oldest two of whom are cub scouts. For those several hours our children played more than raked, and frolicked amongst the crackling tangle foot, sometimes casually pausing in front of the memorials.

Cleaning the park was an honor for me, and not just because the job needed to be done out of respect for a fallen comrade, citizen, neighbor; but because I was there with my family and friends enjoying the freedom Steven so selflessly defended against the first skirmish by radical male Muslim extremists in the Global War on Terrorism.  This park, along with a memorial in the courtyard at Comsewogue High School, is Steven’s legacy, and a reminder to us all that there are people out there who want us to suffer his same fate.

These terrorists literally tried to cook Steven and approximately 100 others alive, setting fire inside the embassy in an area below the security vault where they sweated and waited for help, while Pakistani Army troops and police balked at a timely rescue.

Eventually, over four hours after sovereign U.S. embassy territory was invaded, the Pakistani Army and police disbursed the crowd of blood thirsty terrorists, who had arrived in busses together to show disapproval with the mistaken belief that the U.S. had seized the mosque at Mecca.  In fact, it was a radical male Muslim extremist group within Saudi Arabia who had briefly taken control of the mosque, yet news agencies around the world perpetrated the lie that the U.S. had desecrated that holy site.  A few days after it was taken, Saudi and French commandos stormed the mosque and routed the interlopers.

While American hostages were being kept at the American embassy in Tehran, Iran, which had been overtaken by another group of male Muslim extremist students, with the threat of execution if we attempted a rescue, Cpl. Steven J. Crowley was being murdered in the line of duty.  The Global War on Terrorism had begun, but we had just begun to discount our enemy’s insidious ability and will to reach out and kill indiscriminately.

Twenty-eight years later, a 47 year old Steven Crowley just may have been cleaning up leaves in a park with his cub scout, had the newspapers gotten it right, and had the American administration of Jimmy Carter heeded warnings that harboring an ill Shah of Iran would incite such a reaction, or worse.  President Carter chose to ignore his advisors.  President Carter would later escort Steven Crowley’s mother during the funeral ceremonies for her son at Arlington National Cemetery.

The death of Steven Crowley was a tragedy, but it need not be a senseless one.  By taking the fight to the enemy we insure a safer United States.  Steven Crowley died so that we could enjoy the abundant freedom and liberty of these great United States.  Do we have the same fortitude, courage and conviction to protect ourselves that Steven Crowley did those many years ago?  Or will we become what Tom Paine called a “sunshine patriot”, deserving neither freedom nor liberty because we were unwilling to “undergo the fatigue of supporting” them?