The search continues for the numinous or hieroglyphic significance of the date September 11. Believers in propaganda by deed, like Gavrilo Princip and Timothy McVeigh, usually choose to invest themselves with portentousness by selecting an anniversary that will freight their murder with meaning. Often, it is a date that only meant something to a very limited or arcane circle until its true value was unveiled to a stunned world. Thus Princip chose the date of Serbia's 14th century defeat in Kosovo and McVeigh chose the anniversary of Janet Reno's bloodbath at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

I've also frequently heard it suggested that the timing of the recent attacks was linked somehow to the signing of the Camp David agreement in September 1978. I thought this sounded a plausible reason for the death-squads circling that date in their diaries - until I discovered that the agreement was in fact signed on September 17. Fanatics don't make mistakes like that.

I now think I can provide a more persuasive explanation, however. It was on September 11 1683 that the conquering armies of Islam were met, held, and thrown back at the gates of Vienna.

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.)

If my speculation is correct, then whoever wanted to destroy the hearts of New York and Washington was animated by something more than a recent grievance over the West Bank or the Iraqi sanctions.



Troubling times for the Washington hawks



It is noticeable that in today's Washington the recent and the local and the immediate are the determinants of policy. Those who had a pre-existing resentment against Saddam Hussein, for example, or against Syria and the Hezbollah, are taking the chance to push their preferred bugbears.

At the defence department, a faction most identified with assistant secretary Paul Wolfowitz has been pressing for an assault on Iraq and - while he is about it - the forces of Hezbollah. For Colin Powell, whose own reputation as a man of infinite moderation is extremely dear to him, the business of coalition-building in the Arab world is of much greater importance. And, judging from the way things are going, he must have the support of Dick Cheney in order to be prevailing. I ran into one of the leading hawks at a television studio this week; he wasn't even trying to look happy. "If you think it looks clueless and confused from the outside," he said, "you should see it from the inside."

Of course, Powell was opposed even to moving some carriers into the Gulf on the warning of an invasion of Kuwait (something his enemies never fail to bring up.) And the idea of having Muslim allies is so crucial to the self-esteem of the Bushies that they would rather handle the Pakistanis and Saudis with tongs than run the risk of offending yesterday's (and probably today's) patrons of the Taliban.

I had to confess my worries to another administration person the other night. "So what you are telling me," I said, "is that the only ones apart from me who worry about under-reaction are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Ariel Sharon lobby?"

"That's about it," he replied, a touch too contentedly for my taste.



Security? It makes me nervous



I am keeping a list of things that don't make me feel any safer. Congressman Gary Condit, whose public woes more or less came to an end on September 11, was, at that point, in danger of losing his seat on the house intelligence committee. He is now a key member of the new special house committee on counter-terrorism. As they say, only in America . . .

Meanwhile, I was asked to produce a photo-identification when buying a ticket for a train to New York. It seemed odd that they would want my picture when I had gone to all the trouble of turning up in person, but once I had produced it I was allowed to carry my unsearched bags straight on to the express.

And in the friendly skies, a friend, who flew business class, was given a plastic knife and a steel fork with his in-flight food. The new rules only specify no knives. Presumably the next generation of hijackers will employ forks, or perhaps tridents, and be allowed to carry them on.



We're not all stupid



I am beginning to get irritated by the public-service announcements recorded by various pop-culture icons which implore me not to go out and burn my neighbourhood mosque or lynch my local Sudanese grocer.

Neither I, nor anyone I know, was planning any such thing, and the fact is that most Americans understand perfectly well what not to do without being told.

The shameful attacks on random Sikhs and other ethnic-minority citizens were very few, and took place (as such things normally do) far from the scene of the crimes.

The public doesn't expect praise for refraining from pogroms, but nor does it expect ceaseless injunctions to abstain from them.

It's now been three weeks since the United States took a terrific physical and emotional blow; that means it's not a moment too soon to say that the general response has been exemplary.

 Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair