We’ve Been Here Before... October 7 was an Auspicious Day to Strike

We’ve Been Here Before
October 7 was an Auspicious Day to Strike
By Duncan Maxwell Anderson
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 10, 2001

"A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from American and British vessels, including American submarines, in the Arabian Sea.

"This official said targets included air defenses, military communications sites and terrorist training camps inside Afghanistan. ‘This is going to be a prolonged, sustained effort over several days,’ the official said."

THE SHOOTING has begun. We've seen little, and heard a lot of words since the attacks of Sept. 11, and some commentators have suggested that there have been no American strikes until this past Sunday because President Bush hasn't really known what to do next, against an invisible, perhaps omnipotent enemy.

But listening to the news every hour can be deceptive. In a real military campaign, much of the time, words are issued to mask action. The reality is that Delta Force and British SAS commandos infiltrated Afghanistan within days of Sept. 11 to pinpoint the air strikes that have just begun. The purpose is not to destroy aspirin factories, but to "take out the enemy’s eyes and ears" in preparation for a ground attack. U.S. Army Rangers and 10th Mountain Division troops are ringing the country preparing to roust detachments of Taliban troops from their tunnels.

No doubt the Talibans and their Arab mercenaries are tough. On the other hand, to make Ranger, you have to run a 5:30 mile carrying a 60-lb. pack on your back, followed immediately by a second mile at a 5:50 pace — and be one of the first 50 men to finish the race. Those who qualify get a year's pressure-cooker instruction in weapons, tactics, and hand-to-hand fighting, if they last.

Mountain Division troops can do all that on skis, and live outdoors in any weather for two weeks (or more) without re-supply.

Technology will probably be more important to this conflict than we can now imagine. Satellites and Northern Alliance scouts have probably been mapping the movements of individual donkeys. In short, the experiences of the British and the Soviets in this country may or may not be relevant. This will be an American war.

I'm reminded of the closing of John Keegan's brilliant book Warpaths—Travels of a Military Historian in North America:

There is, I have said, an American mystery, the nature of which I only begin to perceive. If I were obliged to define it, I would say it is the ethos—masculine, pervasive, unrelenting—of work as an end in itself. War is a form of work, and America makes war, however reluctantly, however unwillingly, in a particularly workmanlike way.

Once they have been forced to take up the task of war, Keegan observes, "Americans shoulder the burden with intimidating purpose."

Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden, the Yuppie murderer and drug dealer, seems to have lost a little of his swagger. Trapped in a darkened Afghanistan of his own making, he is no longer declaring that the Americans will not dare come after him, and that the descendants of the Crusaders are soft and impotent. Instead, he is calling on Muslims around the world to come to his assistance. Please. Now.

Like most men from the East, bin Laden is acutely aware of history in a way that puts our ignorance of it to shame. Four hundred and thirty years ago, the Ottoman emperor Selim II pursued the same Islamic imperialism to which bin Laden lays claim today. The Ottoman Turks controlled an army and navy that had conquered Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and Greece, and were poised to take Italy. Ali Pasha, commander of the Muslim fleet, announced that he would pull down the cross atop St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and replace it with the crescent moon. It was a similar gesture to destroying the World Trade Center.

But before Ali Pasha could carry out his threat, Pope Pius V, an astute diplomat, united squabbling factions from Spain, Venice, and the Papal States to mount a last-ditch resistance—headed by Don John of Austria, the 25-year-old, illegitimate son of the Austrian emperor. On September 17, 1571, although badly outnumbered, Don John led a fleet of ships in search of the Muslim navy and finally met them on October 7 in the Gulf of Lepanto, off the western coast of Greece.

Back in Rome, Pope Pius led processions of the faithful, praying the Rosary for a Christian victory.

Four hours after hostilities commenced, the Ottoman fleet had been destroyed. The Battle of Lepanto – memorialized in G.K. Chesterton’s poem "Lepanto" – was the turning point in the long war to save Europe from the steady march of Islamic conquest.

In thanksgiving, the Pope fixed the date of the naval victory at Lepanto as the Feast of the Holy Rosary. That feast is October 7, the commenced air strikes on Afghanistan.

The campaign against Islamic terrorists may be long. But as the terrorists themselves are well aware, it has begun on an auspicious day for the West.

Text of G.K. Chesterton's "Lepanto"

G. K. Chesterton. 1874–

91. Lepanto

WHITE founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;	5
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.	10
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,	15
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.	20
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold	25
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,	30
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.	35

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,	40
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,	45
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea	50
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.	55
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,	60
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!	65
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!	70
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)	75
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,	80
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,—
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.	85
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria	90
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,	</TD

And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.	95
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,	100
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!	105
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,	110
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;	115
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung	120
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,	125
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,	130
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!	135
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,	140
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Sort of puts it into perspective, doesn't it?

The heart that longs for the epic, the one that yearns, burns for that day when everything in a person's lifetime comes into focus, has definitely been awakened. This massive "clash of civilizations", where East meets West in a nuclear age, may in fact be the beginning of an upheaval so monumental, nothing by comparison has been seen for nearly half of a millinium.

For those of us who haven't yet shaken their soft, overfed, spiteful stupor, and woken up to that possibility, it may be time to consider that from this point on, it's could be all or nothing. It's clearly so MUCH bigger than Afghanastan, or even the entire Middle East. For there are vestiges of Eastern thought throughout the rapidly developing, militarily proliferating Orient. We either win this one, or we loose EVERYTHING.

In consideration of the theme of this piece, is anyone surprised that we're being openly told that this war is a "Serious Business"? One that will last for years and years, with some even calling it WWIII, and qualified military historians suggesting it could be the longest, most difficult war of engagement for the US since the Revolution?

IMHO, this may in fact become the most vulnerable moment in American history. It looks very much like it could completely make or break us, as with the Revolution itself. And if it DOES in fact turn out to be comparable to the Revolutionary War in duration and possibly meaning, isn't it about time for the spiteful, spoiled, anti-Western voices among us (hey-hey, ho-ho, Western Culture's gotta go!) to also get serious and voluntarily quiet themselves and lend a shoulder before their smug, ivory-towered, intellectualy vapid world, shatters at their feet?

The worst they can do is bomb a few serfs in their cubicles...

I see it quite differently. The WTC were in fact as close as one can come to the very nerve center of the NWO, at least in the Western Hemisphere. This hit nearly destabliized world markets and threw the world's reserve currency, the dollar, into the tank. At least that was the intent.

Furthermore, the WTC was not only in the very neighborhood of the Pratt House, but many insiders either worked or ran much of their business from the WTC. So it wasn't just their 'serfs' that took the hit.

As far as their quislings in Congress, when THOSE folks figured out that 1) they were on the hit list and nearly bought the farm, and 2) that one or more nuclear hits were very likely just down the little road in time, they pulled their paws out of each other's breeches for at least a minute, and pi$$ed their pants in the National Cathedral, solemnly mouthing out hymns from dusty books they hadn't held since childhood, with trembling hand and biting lip. I think THEY got the message.

And while the ME opposition is now beginning to waffle and back step (that's their way), the possibility of a client state like North Korea placing a portable nuke or two into the hands of those where a 'client state' can't be traced, is REAL. So IMHO, the NWO was caught off guard, having spent their proverbial wad trying to coverup-up their duplicity in preserving the the foolish excesses of the x42 administration and their reckless thirst for a global 'state'.

My feeling is that they're moving now in angst, knowing if they fail, their backs will be up against the wall in not too distant future. The good part is that they had to toss off 50 years of global effort at demonizing US national sovereignty, and once again embrace "the last refuge of the scoundral", US nationalism. They now need their serfs again, just as they did during WWII. Maybe less than I might have hoped for, but still a thrilling little victory for me to see them squirm and back-track behind OUR flag once again, even if it does mean a loss of liberty. I'm just pleased to have lived to witness them in a moment of humility born of their own making. It's funny how that "original sin" myth, and the notion of being "born again", keeps cropping it's head up in our visceral, mortal, spyche.

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