Battle of Lepanto

[Jasper Fidget]

http://frontpagemag.com/guestcolumnists/anderson10-10-01.htm

[...]
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.


Duncan Maxwell Anderson