9-11 Significant Throughout History

By H.W. ‘Hawk’ Kiefer
Special to the Herald Courier

The anniversary of Sept. 11 is tomorrow, a date that marked a horrendous triumph for Muslim terrorists. Oddly enough, it also is the date of one of Islam’s worst defeats. On an earlier occasion, Muslim armies had attacked the West, but in a battle on that earlier Sept. 11, they were thoroughly beaten. 

The radical strain of Islam has repeatedly attacked the West. The first such attacks came after Muhammad’s death in AD 632, when Muslim warriors swept out of Arabia to India in the east and Spain in the west. Those attacks ended in defeat at the hands of Charles Martel at Tours in AD 732.

The second wave of attacks came when the Mongols captured Constantinople in AD 1453. After they changed the name of that city to Istanbul and created the Ottoman Empire, they invaded the Balkans. Intent on conquering Eastern Europe, they set siege to Vienna, the capital of the Hapsburg Empire.

On Sept. 11, 1863, however, a Hapsburg coalition broke the siege and routed the armies of Islam. The Treaty of Karlowitz ended the Ottoman attacks by penalizing the Muslims so severely that the fortunes of Islam went into a 200-year decline. In the first half of the 20th century that decline was complete and Muslims were insignificant on the world stage. Most Americans could then not find Mecca on a map. 

The armies of Islam were so cowed that when I was in the Middle East in the 1960s, I walked the streets of Cairo, Jeddah, Riyadh, Beirut, Amman and Jerusalem alone, at night, unarmed and unharmed. If an American were to try that today, the chances are good that he would be kidnapped, tortured and beheaded. What changed?

Money. In the seventies, Saudi Arabia raised the price of a barrel of oil from one dollar to $35. Suddenly Muslims had more money than they could spend, and a percentage ended in the hands of Islamic radicals. 

One set of such hands belonged to Hezbollah. The so-called Army of God was formed in 1982, inspired by the Ayatollah Khomeini and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. In 1983, with Persian guidance, training and money, Hezbollah launched yet another attack by radical Islam against the West, when they drove an explosive-laden truck into the Marines’ barracks at Beirut and killed 241 Americans. 

Hezbollah did that because Muslims have long memories and large egos. They remember the Crusades, Charles Martel at Tours and the Hapsburgs in the Balkans. Osama bin Laden may have chosen Sept. 11 as the appropriate date to attack the World Trade Centers as one way to ease Muslim memory of the date of Islam’s defeat before Vienna. 

The radical strain of Islam also attacks the West because that religion had never reached accommodation with the rest of the world. The other great monotheistic religions of our civilization, Judaism and Christianity, long ago learned that they had to adjust and compromise with each other and with those who did not believe as they did. Islam has never accepted that concept. Many Muslims believe that Islam’s way is the only way, and they are willing to die to prove it. They will continue to attack as long as they have money and the silence of more moderate Muslims.

How can America contend with such radicals? Three come immediately to mind. First the free world must defend itself when attacked. We are doing that in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Second we must pressure Islam to accommodate. We have taken baby steps in that direction by focusing on the lack of human rights, religious freedom, universal suffrage and freedom of the press in countries like Saudi Arabia. Finally, we must cut off the money. We are sending $700 billion abroad each year to import energy. Significant sums fall into the hands of those who want us dead. If those fanatics did not have that money, they would be powerless.

If the United States had a strong domestic energy program, the price of a barrel of OPEC oil would drop $100, gasoline would be below $2 a gallon and Islam would no longer be a threat.

An effective domestic energy program would include conservation, drilling, mining, nuclear power, alternative energy and new technology. We must not pick and choose which to adopt, especially based on political or economic gain. We need them all. For the sake of our children’s future we should stop bickering and start to free ourselves from Middle East oil.

H.W. ‘Hawk’ Kiefer is a retired Army colonel who lives in Abingdon. He can be reached at .