Posted on 10/03/2001 7:59:54 PM PDT by anapikoros
The search continues for the numinous or hieroglyphic significance of the date September 11. Believers in propaganda by deed, like Gavrilo Princip and Timothy McVeigh, usually choose to invest themselves with portentousness by selecting an anniversary that will freight their murder with meaning. Often, it is a date that only meant something to a very limited or arcane circle until its true value was unveiled to a stunned world. Thus Princip chose the date of Serbia's 14th century defeat in Kosovo and McVeigh chose the anniversary of Janet Reno's bloodbath at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. I've also frequently heard it suggested that the timing of the recent attacks was linked somehow to the signing of the Camp David agreement in September 1978. I thought this sounded a plausible reason for the death-squads circling that date in their diaries - until I discovered that the agreement was in fact signed on September 17. Fanatics don't make mistakes like that.
I now think I can provide a more persuasive explanation, however. It was on September 11 1683 that the conquering armies of Islam were met, held, and thrown back at the gates of Vienna.
Now this, of course, is not a date that has only obscure or sectarian significance. It can rightly, if tritely, be called a hinge-event in human history. The Ottoman empire never recovered from the defeat; from then on it was more likely that Christian or western powers would dominate the Muslim world than the other way around. In our culture, the episode is often forgotten or downplayed, except by Catholic propagandists like Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton. But in the Islamic world, and especially among the extremists, it is remembered as a humiliation in itself and a prelude to later ones. (The forces of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza once published a statement saying that they could not be satisfied until all of Spanish Andalusia had been restored to the faithful as well.)
If my speculation is correct, then whoever wanted to destroy the hearts of New York and Washington was animated by something more than a recent grievance over the West Bank or the Iraqi sanctions
Unless one wishes to consider that the Archduke chose the same date to visit Sarajevo to celebrate the Hapsburg domination of those same people.
Perspective, you see, is a subjective thing.
They inflicted a very small hit, in the big scheme of things. Not enough to do more than piss us off.
And unless one considers that the 7-day forecast for September 11 forecast clear conditions all across the Eastern seaboard.
Cloudless skies across the northeast being a prerequisite for the four hijackings and attacks...
Does anybody know when the reservations were dated?
It was the evil Italian Jews! It was SO unfair, they took our land away! Waaaaahh! Give it baaaccckkk, We'll tell! Sob,It was the evil Italian Jews!
/sarcasm off
Oddly, I was also more bothered by the idea that stocks had been purchased and sold before the attack than the actual attack itself.
Not sure why these things "speak" to me.
AUS 911
peace all
Kudos!
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