Remembrance

September 11th, 2026

In thinking back 25 years it helps to look back a little bit further in order to put things in perspective.

1966 was 25 years after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were no longer the enemy. In fact, they had already become solid allies. And even though the US and Japan would face some difficult economic relations in the years ahead, no one seriously considered Japan an existential threat to the US or to the Western world in any sense. 

But it would be incorrect to say that the existential threat from radical Islam has faded.

September 11th, 2001 did not mark the first battle between radical Islam and the US, or more generally the West. After all, the Beirut barracks bombing took place 43 years ago. We have been squared off against the Islamic Republic of Iran for 47 years.

But the history is far older than that.

Some like to argue that that problem actually began with the First Crusade, suggesting that, in a certain sense “we started it.” Well, not exactly; that’s a bit off. The 1st Crusade sprung from a request by the Byzantine emperor Alexios I in 1095, asking for help in fighting off the Seljuk Turks, who were attacking his borders; the Byzantine empire had been under attack for a while.

In fact, the first contact between the armies of expanding of Islam and the Western World was in 629 AD, 466 years before the 1st Crusade. Wars of conquest - large and small - by the armies of Islam continued, pretty much nonstop until, well, today. 

In 711 the Umayyad general Tariq ibn Ziyad (Gibraltar - Jebel Tar - Tar’s Mountain) invaded the Iberian peninsula. In the 8th century Umayyad armies invaded France. They were defeated at the Battle of Tours (October 10th, 732) by Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer, or the Hammer of God), and slowly withdrew back into the Iberian Peninsula. They continued to occupy all or part of Iberia until Islamic Grenada surrendered in 1491, some 780 years later.

Constantinople - Istanbul, was founded by the Romans in 324, built on top of the city of Byzantium - a Greek city founded in 667 BC. Constantinople was Roman, or Western, until conquered by Ottoman armies under the Ottoman emperor Mehmed II in 1453. So, comments that land “has always been…” or has “historically been” Muslim is a bit of a spin. 

Jerusalem sits on top of settlements that stretch back 5,000 years - the site of a spring at the intersection of trade routes, connecting Egypt with Sumer and Mesopotamia, and sitting at the north end of what became known as the Frankincense Road, that started around Aden and ran up the west side of the Arabian peninsula. The Jewish people first moved into the region some time before 1,000 BC and have lived there since, though they have been driven off the land several times, only to return. The first mention of the Palestinians, not really to be conflated with the Philistines, is from the early 1800s.

And the last Crusade ended in 1291 - 835 years ago, after a mere 195 years of fighting. But multiple wars in the Balkans, wars of attempted conquest by Islamic empires, the battle of Lepanto, the siege of Vienna, all took place well after the last faint echo of the Crusades had faded away.

Radical Islam’s wars of conquest, or attempted conquest, really have not stopped. Think of the bizarre scenes in Ceuta. Think of those ongoing scenes in countries across Europe - and in several states into the US - where communities exist that insist on the protections of US or Western law, but who, at the same time don’t agree with that law, who want to be physically here, but to live under another system of law, who do not wish to assimilate. Communities in the US who do wish to force change on the rest of the US, who would, if they could, change our very system of government. That’s the definition of unlimited war - the overthrow of a government.

In a very real sense, this has been ongoing for 1400 years, pretty much endless war. But not one the West started. Has radical Islam given up? No. Radical Islam seeks to destroy the West, and they say as much. If they were given the means, it is hard to imagine they would not use it.

And the means to destroy us are growing. Cyber warfare and biological warfare - as demonstrated by COVID, mean a growing list of threats. Modern technology - drones, AI, robotics - means growing threats in the years ahead. 

The war isn’t over, not even close. Radical Islam is still a threat. And likely to remain so for a long time into the future. Have we made mistakes? Yes. But the threat hasn’t faded in the last 25 years. Or 1400. Today, on the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attack, we need to remember that fact. And we need to be vigilant. The war is not over.