One of the Reasons I Remember 9-11-01
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.

Gary Krupp: Pave the Way Foundation Books: Pope Pius XII and World War II: The Documented Truth : a Compilation of International Evidence Revealing the Wartime Acts of the Vatican.
15,000 concentration camps.
Eisenhower was right. Some university teachers are saying the Holocaust never happened. Some survivors are leaving their personal accounts and testimony on the internet. Steven Spielberg has called for all testimony.
They project like crazy.
It’s been noted by a lot of folks in the last 20 years that a lot of folks in the progressive zone were broken by 9/11– from “no borders” type libertarians to “everyone is just like the US, but better” liberals.
Some of those broken people did and do use 9/11 as an excuse for what they want to do anyways, even when it is something that contributed to 9/11 happening.
[…] the Children: Mother Teresa Challenges Us All – Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review One of the Reasons I Remember 9-11-01 – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American Catholic Chorus Angelorum: The […]
Christopher Hitchens (of all people) wrote this about a month after the September 11 attacks and I consider this the most plausible of all that was floated out there about the “why”:
It was on September 11 1683 that the conquering armies of Islam were met, held, and thrown back at the gates of Vienna. (The Polish King John Sobieski defeated the Ottomans on this date in 1683)
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.)
For Islamic Terrorists, The United States of America has always represented Christianity. The attack was by no means an act of random impulse conjured up in modern times. The Islamic hatred of the western world, with America as the epitome of western culture, runs deeply through Muslim veins.
That bottom pic so reminds me of the time this, then preteen, snuck a peek at my Dad’s “Book of the Month” book, filled with gory liberated Auschwitz pics–ghastly evidence that man had indeed fallen. Now I see that out nation’s abortion numbers have reached some six-fold times that of Nazi Germany’s best efforts.
That top graphic is…pretty dishonest. To be charitable.
I was serving in the Air Force at the time. I don’t recall anything the Armed Services, FBI, CIA, or police did before or after that warrants such criticism.
If anything, 9/11 served as a warning that being hyper-optimistic about the virtues of pluralism, diversity, or multiculturalism…could literally have deadly consequences.
John I think it’s the type of diversity and multiculturalism which is allowed that breaks a society. The Christian type is ok. The non-Christian type can be dangerous particularly if they are unwilling to adopt the values of their new home.
Sorry, I’m trying to comment and it’s coming up with a message “nonce is invalid”- so checking if there is an issue on previous posts I have commented on.
I will request that Tito look into it Ezabelle.
The conspiracy theories started pretty quickly–the jackass Frenchman who claimed it was a missile fired at the Pentagon, the crankery about Tower 7.
It’s hard to explain that day to my children, the oldest of whom was five days old at the time.
The way people have polarized ever since, it really seems like it happened to a different country. The deracinated twits reading bin Laden like an oracle over the past year shows you how far we have fallen.
It’s hard to remember almost how strange everything suddenly was. Just a few, not necessarily connected memories from that day or time:
the news showed the impact on the south tower over and over (later it would practically be forbidden to broadcast it);
there were no commercials all day long;
the Kyron (or script at the bottom of the screen) started then and didn’t go away until recently;
even by the afternoon, we had no idea (on the west coast anyway) whether more attacks were coming or not: some were reporting that up to seven planes were unaccounted for initially;
an opinion piece in Time strongly suggested that it was time for the U.S. to start using torture, a’ la the French in Algeria in the ’50’s, to uncover further plots;
Hilary Clinton and the rest of the Senate were televised on the steps of the Capitol singing “God Bless America”;
American flags were everywhere, almost every vehicle had one;
people started saying, “I love you,” and “Stay (be) safe,” before hanging up the phone;
the bombing of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan began on the feast of the Holy Rosary.
One last 9/11 post for this year. Very thoughtful and thought-provoking essay at The Stream yesterday.
https://stream.org/what-september-11-2001-taught-us-there-are-no-adults-in-the-room/