The "Siege of Vienna" was in 1529. The "Battle of Vienna" - which also had a siege - was in 1683.

"the next day the united West triumphed..."
The war continued for another 16 years.

"the united West..." The anti-Ottoman forces were a "Holy League" Of Catholic Austrians, Poles, Venetians, and Hungarians. A Protestant Hungarian army fought WITH the Ottomans. The French under Louis XIV used the opportunity to seize Austrian lands in the west. Most of what we think of as Europe wasn't paying attention.

"High water mark.."
Actually it was more like a last gasp. The Ottoman progress into Europe had been stopped several decades earlier. If they had taken Vienna, that would have changed the direction of history but- they didn't.

Ain't Wikipedia wonderful?

It is also ridiculous to call the Ottomans "Islamic extremists". By 1629 Islamic religious fervor was not at a high point by any means,and I don't believe the population of the Ottoman empire was even majority Muslim at the time.

Both the 1529 and 1683 sieges are described as the "Siege of Vienna," with the 1683 one being better known. The Battle of Vienna of 1683 was just one incident in the siege - when the Polish-Imperial army under John Sobieski and Charles of Lorraine arrived to relieve the city and defeated the Ottoman army there. There was no particular battle in 1529, because, iirc, the Turks basically retreated on their own due to poor weather and the end of the campaigning season.

I don't think that capturing Vienna in 1683 would've actually made much of a difference. I don't think they could've held onto it permanently. And European and French public opinion (such as it was) would probably have forced Louis XIV to make peace with Leopold and join him in repelling the Turks. Which would, I suppose, have changed the direction of history, but probably not in the direction of Ottoman domination of central Europe.

One could argue that the real high point of the ottoman empire was in 1565 and the siege of Malta. Failure to take malta followed by lepanto in 1571 turned the western and central med into a christian lake which allowed the austrians to start pushing back into the balkans.

So Senator Santorum thinks the Crusades should be revisited?  Why else would he frame current events in the ME in such historical terms?

Between Gingrich's comments on MTP and now this I think the wingnuts are trying to frame this as a new Crusade that will be fought by having WWIII.  It is not Islam vs. Christianity it is radical Muslim extremists vs. God fearing Christian extremists...the key is religious extremists are driving this whole GWOT on both sides of the fight. 

Questioning Rick Santorum's statements about anything reminds me of Wash's comment in "Serenity:"

"Do we care about that? Are we caring about that?"

I agree with Libertine - this sort of nonsense just ramps up the rhetoric to no good purpose. The radical Christian cultists want WWIII so they can have their "Rapture" and Santorum is using that for his own political purposes.

There's no point in discussing it as if it matters that Santorum doesn't know history.

Even though I didn't say it as such here Seth I should have.  In my reply on Juliette Kayyem's thread I did refer to the to the people of "The West" as Judeo-Christian extremists.  Not to say all Judeo-Christians or Muslims are extremists...but the ones driving this to new lows in terms of rhetoric are.  Bottom line is whatever the "reasons" are both sides are trying to frame this struggle, war, or whatever it is called, as having to do with Western Judeo-Christian values against Middle-Eastern Islamic values.  It is The West (Europe, The Americas and Israel) against the Middle-East and they are waging a battle for control of the planet...I don't see it that way but that is how it is being framed.  

Certainly, one who has expressed it that way is Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. I disagree with some of his ideas, but also should note that's a 1998 book (possibly even earlier, but I have...somewhere...a 1998 paperback).

One of my issues, which might be worth a whole post of its own if I had access to my largely packed library, is how monolithic is Islam, and dealing with the subcase of the desire for Islamic (i.e., Shar'ia) rule. Often, I think we overfocus on the Middle East and ascribe to Islamic thinking what really may be Arab or Persian nationalism. Part of my thinking may be affected by my having a number of Muslim friends from Africa, mostly but not completely subsaharan.

The situation in South Asia is also complex, with a need to separate thinking about actions tied to Kashmir from the actions of both the state of Pakistan and those of the large number of Muslims that regard themselves politically as loyal Indian citizens.

How does this affect the framing? Mind you, I grow depressingly weary of policymakers and pundits that get challenged by more specific questions than "where is the continent of Africa on this world map?"
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Might throw in the Sufis there, too, Howard.

I've read some stuff from Peter Lamborn Wilson, who is an anarchist radical who also apparently happens to know quite a bit about Islamic mysticism. Some of that stuff, the Ismailis, the Sufis, the Yezidis, etc., is fairly interesting.

I tend to find cults and schisms of major religious movements - Eastern or Western - interesting because they tend to expose issues that are either glossed over or suppressed for social, economic or political reasons by the major sects.

The lack of uniformity in Judaism - Madonna and her Kabbalah, or the Neturei Karta - Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism - for example - might be amusing to dissect some time, along with the Islamic sects.

Last Thanksgiving was especially memorable for me. My ex-wife and I were the guest of a clan of people originally from Sierra Leone. It's worthy of thanks that people once in a bitter divorce can be friends.

More to the point, these people are like extended family to us, and vice versa. Spiritually, the family is a mixture of Muslims and Christians, the Christians mostly coming from intermarriage with people in the US for a long time, and they often from traditional black churches.

Dinner was a very odd mixture of total informality and deep discussion, as well as assorted intercultural things like tasting the best ham glaze I've ever had, made by a Muslim. One of the discussions was led by an elder who would be in the next Hajj, and it's fascinating to talk, very honestly, on what he (and others in the family) thought of that upcoming experience.

They recounted horror stories of the banditry and civil war in Sierra Leone and neighboring countries, but they didn't really connect that with the Western GWOT -- and details of militias amputating arms for fun definitely qualifies as terror. With respect to terrorism in the US, they sounded pretty middle-of-the-road for Americans, although, to put it mildly, none were Bush fans.

The ability to connect with Muslims outside the Middle East is one of the hidden strengths in dealing with those that specifically orient themselves to a resurgence of the Caliphate.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Or, to put it another way, "Don't forget Poland!"

Actually, it could be argued that if Sobieski had ignored the Ottoman attack on Vienna and taken his army east to fight the Russians (and won), there would have been no partitions of Poland, and the history of Europe from the 18th century onwards would have been very different.

First, if you're going to call right-wingers dumb - as opposed to calling Rick Santorum dumb - then you lose all claims to civility.

Second, of course history is relevant. Muslims are very conscious of the Crusades and Crusaders (even if we weren't until very recently) and so are all the southeastern Europeans from the Balkans who remember very well what it was like to be subjects of the Muslims. We fought in the Balkans very recently to prevent a genocidal culmination of these ancient hatreds. Your ignorance of the obvious defines very well who is dumb and who is not.

I also think the actual high-water mark of the Ottoman advance was during the 1529 seige but don't quote me on that

There is no actual high water mark in the sense that you can find it somewhere. But when did Muslim power start to ebb in their fight with the West? The battle of Lepanto in 1571 would be my choice.

Yeah, I mean, it's not as if the person spouting this racist, divisive, explicitly-against-the-teachings-of-Christ bullshit was the number three ranking Republican in the Senate of the United States. So, no biggie. Matt's just being petty, pointing out that that the the number three ranking Republican in the Senate of the United States is an idiot.

THIS ISN'T CONTENT:

"First, if you're going to call right-wingers dumb - as opposed to calling Rick Santorum dumb - then you lose all claims to civility."

THIS PART IS CONTENT:

Second, of course history is relevant. Muslims are very conscious of the Crusades and Crusaders (even if we weren't until very recently) and so are all the southeastern Europeans from the Balkans who remember very well what it was like to be subjects of the Muslims. We fought in the Balkans very recently to prevent a genocidal culmination of these ancient hatreds.

THIS ISN'T:

Your ignorance of the obvious defines very well who is dumb and who is not.

Since you do have some content, I'll uprate you to 2.

Happy now?

UPDATE: Wait a minute, now I see this post above:

"95% of Americans wouldn't know enough to call him on his factual mistakes.

You are clearly a member of that group. What separates you from most of them is that you think you know something - mistaking warmed-over Marxist cant for actual knowledge."

Sorry - repetitive inappropriate insults.

Back to 1 you go.

Is is not also the case that the Ottoman Turks were tolerant of   the Greek Orthodox Christian faith.  While they kept tabs on the Patriarchs, the Ottoman rulers did not interfere with the worship of the Orthodox faithful.

Given that the Crusades ended with a Muslim victory, I don't see why they should much care at this late date.

That's not the issue. They do care. Therefore it is relevant to modern policy.

Good point. It's very hard to understand Sudan, and thus Darfur, without understanding Sufism, and how it morphed, in Sudan, into the Mahdist movement of the 19th century onwards. Perhaps the leading proponent of Sudanese hard-line and the the wild card of Sudanese politics is Hassan al-Turabi, who, oddly enough, is a moderate in some social issues.

I've been mentioning, in a number of posts, how official Israeli religious authorities discriminate against Reform and Conservative Jews.

Understanding the evolution of what the West commonly calls Jihad -- the violence called "lesser jihad" by Muslim scholars -- is also worthwhile. Lesser jihad is external violence, while greater jihad is an internal submission to the will of Allah. Interestingly, the theory is relatively recent. Lesser jihad was first thoroughly described by Ibn Tamiya (1263-1328), but today's theoreticians of violence are surprisingly recent: Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) and Abdullah Azzam (1941–1989). Due to the difficulty of transliterating Arabic into Roman letters, you'll see spelling variations of these names. Qutb and Azzam were the spiritual fathers of al-Qaeda, Qutb for Zawahiri and Azzam for bin Laden.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Yes, I've seen Qutb mentioned via-a-vis Al Qaeda.

In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but a number of Wahabbists seem to complain that bin Laden is more a follower of Qutb than Wahabbism per se, if I remember correctly. Some of them appear upset that Wahabbism is "getting a bad rap" because of bin Laden.

I've always found ibn Sabbah and the Assassins to be interesting. Lamborn Wilson makes a point about how the Ismaelis were really sort of "Islamic spiritual anarchists" in that ibn Sabbah preached liberation from the Law as part of his cult. A sort of ME version of Aleister Crowley's "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of The Law."

Rating my criticism of your rating? What a dishonest, cowardly person you are.

Just a TINY little suggestion before I go over and take a few anti-acids and read Santorum's prepared remarks.

The color scheme on TPM café is a little problematic.  The difference in color between links and the rest of the text is hard to see, given the type font and type size.

Until the software automatically underlines links or in some other way makes them more noticeable, could writers and commentators bold face links? 

Thankee very much.

Mike

trying to break down history into civilizational essences that have been battling it out across time is just absurd.

Absurd to you...but not to Osama bin Ladin and Samuel Huntington. But then again...who are they? Nobodies.

I would suggest that the high water mark of "Islam extremists" was the Battle of Tours in 732 in what was now France.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel

I regard the Ottoman Empire as typical imperialists who happened to be Muslim. Just a nit.

What is a Jewish extermist? Those who don't think Jews should be murdered? Or those who think the Jews should role over for their murders?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

No, their bedfellows are.

Also, Santorum seems to be referring to a 1683 event -- the battle of Vienna -- that took place on September 12.

America did in fact continue to nurse a grudge against England, a grudge that was expressed in the 1812 war. Hostility to England continued throughout the 1830's and 40's and 50's, reaching a fever pitch with fears that England would intervene in the US civil war on the side of the Confederacy. Thereafter, matters simmered. During much of the first world war, American public opinion divided between Germany and England, with many anglophobes advocating the US come in on Germany's side. The pickings for supporting Germany were arguably much richer. The US did not really embrace England as an ally and friend until the 1930's under FDR. After the war, England ceased to be a real power and became an American subordinate. So, the bottom line is that America can let go a grudge... after 150 years.

As for the Muslims, you have to remember that the Crusades consisted of homicidal religious maniacs, unshaven, unwashed and uncivilized, boiling out of nowhere and slaughtering large numbers of people who were trying to mind their own business. That sort of thing leaves an impression, even if you eventually manage to drive them off.

There is also the stupidity born from what I term Arrogant Naiveté. The Three Monkey Syndrome would be another apt description of this malaise.

It is an effect of slothfullness, the search for truth takes a great deal time, and it is this arrogant naiveté that causes the angry befuddlement that is implied in the outcry, "Why do they hate America".

I think this is a pretty clear case of straw man argumentation.

Selfinterest takes his opponents position, he misrepresents it, exaggerates it, and then when its completely and unrecognizeably gumby-ized, he defeats it as wholly illogical and calls shenanigans.

Hardly cricket, old chap.

The first is a proper and civil reply to his gross ad-hominem.

My "95% of the people" comment was not an ad hominem attack.  I think it is fairly safe to say if you ask 20 Americans if they knew whether Santorum's factual claims about the Crusades were accurate or not probably 19 of them wouldn't know.  It isn't an emperically concluded position but it is not an ad hominem either...it is just stating that the vast majority of Americans don't know enough about the subject to know whether Santorum was being accurate or not. 

First, if you're going to call right-wingers dumb - as opposed to calling Rick Santorum dumb - then you lose all claims to civility.

I don't think RW'ers are dumb.  To the contrary I think they are fairly smart.  They are expert at using intellectual dishonesty to skew the facts in any case they are trying to make their claim that up is down or black is white. 

Lies and the Lying Lobbyists Who Tell Them

Yesterday Hardball featured a smack down between a Lobbyist Congressman and an opponent of the House Blank Check for War Crime Resolution (not ad hominem - wanna a short brief?).

I couldn't believe my ears when the former stated not once but several times that Israel was doing what the PM of Lebanon stated that he wanted - clearing out Hexbollah.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

How many lies does the Israel Lobby think we'll swallow?

 Doubt me?

Click here for what PM Seniora actually said. 

Address to the Diplomatic Corps

Here's what the Lebanese Defense minister said

The Lebanese Defence Minister has said the country's army will join the battle, if Israel launches a full-scale invasion of Lebanon as part of its massive offensive against Hezbollah, according to ABC news.

 

There's no other way to put it. Whether you are sipping espresso at Starbuck's or Cafe Trieste in SF, the Israel Lobby is a  Lobby of Liars pursuing one war, one plan with one practice to deceive.

Neither Silent Nor Silenced

Voters for Peace

http://www.votersforpeace.us/

Re: As for the Muslims, you have to remember that the Crusades consisted of homicidal religious maniacs, unshaven, unwashed and uncivilized, boiling out of nowhere and slaughtering large numbers of people who were trying to mind their own business.

This is a very crude caricature and you ought read some real history before making such comments. As with any large group of human beings the Crusaders consisted of a wide diversity of people: the wise and the saintly along with the stupid and the monstrous. And wars of course always bring out the worst in humanity. The Crusades were in no wise worse than the other wars of the period and the Middle East suffered relatively little damage from them (comparatively speaking). The true catastrophe that fell on the region wasn't from Europe, but from Asia, when the Mongols invaded and went on a killing spree that makes the Crusaders look like Little Bo Peeps. Yet strangely enough one does not find much anti-Mongolian animus in the region, nor are there terrorists bombing builidngs in Ulan Bator.
If Muslims remenber the Crusades I suspect it's because we Westerners keep reminding them.
It's high time though to bury that past. The statute of limitations ran out centuries ago.

Kaplan is that guy who thinks the rest of the world is "Injun Country," right?