On Oct. 6, 1981, Anwar Sadat was assassinated as he watched a military parade commemorating Egypt’s greatest modern military achievement, the crossing of the Suez Canal in the opening phase of the October 1973 war. It was long believed that Egyptian Army Lt. Khalid Islambouli was Sadat’s assassin, but the fatal shot likely came from the gun of Sgt. Hussein Abbas Mohammed, who hit the Egyptian president’s neck from atop a flatbed truck.
The 25,000 National Guard soldiers deployed to the streets of Washington to secure President Joe Biden’s inauguration got me thinking about those events in Egypt almost 40 years ago. It also got me worried that Washington hasn’t heeded the lessons nearly as well as most countries in the Middle East.
