Crusades - Christian In Name, But Not In Truth
Crusades – A Definition
The Crusades were a series of military missions, usually organized and promoted by the Pope and/or Roman Catholic Church. The crusades took place through the 11th and 13th centuries A.D. The original intent of the crusades was to recapture “Christian” lands that had been invaded by Muslims.
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The Crusaders used the Christian cross as their symbol. They believed that the symbol of the cross made them invincible against the armies of the Muslims. The word "Crusade" came from the Latin word for “cloth cross.” Eventually, the word "crusade" was used to describe the entire journey from Europe to the Holy Land.
Crusades - Why were the Crusades launched?
The Crusade were responses to Muslim invasions on what was once land occupied primarily by Christians. From approximately 200 A.D. to approximately 900 A.D. the land of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, etc. was inhabited primarily by Christians. Between 900 and 1075 A.D., Muslims invaded these lands and brutally oppressed, enslaved, deported, and even murdered the Christians living in those lands. In response, the Roman Catholic Church and "Christian" kings/emperors from Europe ordered the crusades to reclaim the land the Muslims had taken. As the crusades progressed, they became far more focused on establishing kingdoms than on reclaiming lands that had once belonged to Christians.
Crusades - Overview of Main Crusades
First Crusade: The first crusade was launched by Pope Urban II after the Council of Clermont in 1095 A.D. The Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople sent a letter to Pope Urban II, asking for his assistance against the progressing Muslim invaders. Urban gave a call to Christians throughout Europe to recapture the Holy Land, and especially Jerusalem, from the Muslims. The crusaders of the First Crusade departed in 1096 and eventually recaptured Jerusalem in 1099. On the way to Jerusalem, the crusaders established “kingdoms” for themselves in various cites in the middle east.
Second Crusade: Shortly after the First Crusade, the Muslims counter-attacked and captured the city of Edessa in 1144 A.D. St. Bernard of Clairvaux traveled throughout Europe, encouraging people to “take up the cross” and push the Muslims back from what they had retaken. Lacking a clear and persuasive goal, and marked by incompetence in leadership, the Second Crusade was an utter failure.
Third Crusade: The Third Crusade was launched in 1189 A.D. In 1187 A.D., the Muslim armies, led by Saladin, had re-conquered Jerusalem. Although at first a huge army was amassed, the Third Crusade was ultimately unsuccessful. The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa of Germany, drowned, under uncertain circumstances, on the way to the Holy Land. Richard the Lionheart of England was able to recapture several coastal cities, but did not attempt to retake Jerusalem due to a lack of resources. Lionheart did negotiate a peace treaty with Saladin, allowing for Christian pilgrims to enter Jerusalem without danger.
Fourth Crusade: The Fourth Crusade began in 1202 A.D. Lacking clear direction and strong leadership, the fourth crusade eventually resulted in a battle between Catholic and Orthodox Christians and the conquering of Constantinople by the Christian armies. The conflict destroyed any unity that remained between Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
Fifth Crusade: The Fifth Crusade took place in 1217 A.D., and was led by Andrew II of Hungary and Leopold VI of Austria. The Fifth Crusade was successful in capturing the city of Damietta, but could not hold it for long, especially after a crushing defeat at the Battle of Al-Mansura. Leopold and Andrew were actually offered control of Jerusalem and other Christian sites in the Holy Land in exchange for the return of Damietta to Muslim control. However, in his misplaced arrogance, Cardinal Pelagius refused the offer, turning a victory into an utter defeat.
Sixth Crusade: The Sixth Crusade was launched in 1228 A.D., and was led by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. The Sixth Crusade ended with a peace treaty that gave Christians authority over several important Christian sites, including Jerusalem.
Seventh and Eighth Crusades: The Seventh and Eight Crusades were led by King Louis IX of France. Both were complete disasters. In the Seventh Crusade, Louis recaptured Damietta, but later had his army routed. In 1270 A.D., Louis died before he was able to reach the goal of the Eighth Crusade.
The Ninth Crusade: The Ninth Crusade was Led by King Edward I of England in 1271 A.D. It was an attempt to defeat the Mamluk sultan of Baibers. The crusade failed, and Edward returned home to England upon learning of the death of his father, Henry III.
Crusades - Christian in name, but not in truth
The violence and barbarism of the Crusaders gave Christianity a bad name. While it can be debated whether going to war against the Muslim invaders to re-capture Jerusalem and the Holy Land can be justified, in no manner can the deplorable actions of the Crusaders be justified. The Crusades may have been undertaken by those claiming the name of Christ, but they most definitely did not follow Christ's example.
Part of the problem with the Crusades was the identity of many of the Crusaders. The majority of the Crusaders were essentially "the scum of the earth," the "lowest of the low." They were those who had nothing to lose, and supposedly everything to gain. Even during the trips through Europe on the way to the Holy Land, pillaging, burning, rape, plunder, and other deplorable acts were commonplace. The frenzy of the First Crusade even resulted in the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland. The Crusaders justified the murdering of Jews by claiming it as revenge for the Jews killing Jesus. Thousands of innocent Jews were murdered and tortured.
When the Crusader army was finally asble to conquer Jerusalem, the slaughter was unimaginable. The Crusaders killed everyone inside Jerusalem, whether Muslim, Jew, or even Christian. By that point, the First Crusade was entirely about conquering lands for personal wealth, not for reclaiming the Holy Land for the Church.
Crusades - Unbiblical, unethical, and un-Christ-like
While the crusades were ordered and led by men who claimed to be Christian, in no sense should the crusades be referred to "Christian." It is highly unlikely that many of the participants in the crusades truly knew Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The true purpose of “Christian” was twisted, corrupted, and humiliated by the evil actions of many of the crusaders.
The crusades were brutal and evil. Many people were forced to "convert" to Christianity. If they refused, they were put to death. This is blatantly unbiblical. . .and perhaps that is the best summary of the issue. The concept of conquering land in the Name of Jesus Christ is completely unbiblical. Jesus Christ nowhere advocates war and violence. The crusades may have been done by so-called Christians. . .but the actions that took place in the crusades were absolutely opposite to all that the Christian faith stands for.
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Last night I had a conversation with one of my mates that covered this subject. He made the comment that all one had to do to pre- figure what might ensue the invasion of Iraq was Google the Crusades and read. There one might learn from history lessons that could be applied today. The pattern was for the armies of the West to achieve great success in the field of battle and then be picked to pieces by "insurgency" while trying to hold and/or control what they had "conquered". I added that the British had followed the same pattern in their occupation of Iraq in the 1920's.
The shame of it is that our country's leaders and the general population do not know much history besides the jingoism that is presented in their school- days "education". The truth, the good, pithy stuff is simply not covered or is only given cursory attention.
Thus, our people are ignorant- not stupid- ignorant as in not having been presented with historical truth and interpretation. Thus, they, "we", do not benefit from the lessons of history. What we have instead is a population, media and government that is generally cowed to "authority", that does not ask enough questions, that does not challenge conventional wisdom or authority and accepts just about anything as true as long as it paints their culture in grand, heroic strokes and stokes their sense of patriotism- affirming their membership on the "winning team". Needless to say this unfamiliarity with history and absorption of propaganda does not lead to very wise decision making and often does lead to catastrophe.
The propagandizing of the public is as shameful as it has been effective. The very idea that if one criticizes a government policy or action that they are "un-American" is absolutely ludicrous. If one, for instance, questions the wisdom of our country's invasion of Iraq, the idea that they hate America, support terror, don't support the troops, want the enemy to win, are lily livered cowards and weak kneed pansies is completely absurd.
Another tragedy is that people imagine that there are only two ways to deal with conflict- either passivity (doing nothing) or warfare- either covert or full on. The more creative and wise ways of conflict resolution are often abandoned after initial setbacks or stay on the shelf completely.
This is untenable especially from a Christian point of view where CHRIST clearly set forth a model for dealing with enemies. My message throughout this blog has been that if we would actually ATTEMPT to follow those teachings- many of these conflicts would simmer down. If you find that idea outrageous or unrealistic- take it up with God because its his material and his plan- not mine.
In another recent conversation I was challenged on my assertion that the whole "conservative/liberal" debate was pointless in terms of theology.
I had asserted that by the definition they were using Jesus would be considered a liberal- because he stood for other than conquering enemies by force, building empires, engaging in the self sustaining cycle of violence and revenge, the paradox of participating in evil to defeat evil or the "destroy them before they destroy us attitude"... all ideas that "Liberals" are accused of as examples of their weakness and lack of reason by so-called conservatives. They did not get this. So I reminded them that in Bible school if they attended, or else in purely historical terms they were most likely taught that perhaps the greatest reason the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah was that they were expecting a fiery, militaristic, leader- by- the- sword, to come and enforce their rightful rule over the world and to establish justice by force. That is clearly not what they got.
Instead they got a Messiah that preached peace, forgiveness, meekness, humbleness, self sacrifice, the renouncing of materialist values, the love of neighbors and enemies and the freedom from fear of earthly domination and death. So I asked then and ask now- if it was not in Christ's plan then to rule the world by strength and force- what makes it ok to transform his message to one of domination and the rule of the sword now- to attach his name to the cause and call it "conservatism" and associate it with the term Christian (as in followers of Christ)now? Oddly, the conversation went dormant right there.
ANYONE?
Bonus article:
Iraq, 1917
By Robert Fisk
Independent U.K.
Thursday 17 June 2004
They came as liberators but were met by fierce resistance outside Baghdad. Humiliating treatment of prisoners and heavy-handed action in Najaf and Fallujah further alienated the local population. A planned handover of power proved unworkable. Britain's 1917 occupation of Iraq holds uncanny parallels with today - and if we want to know what will happen there next, we need only turn to our history books...
On the eve of our "handover" of "full sovereignty" to Iraq, this is a story of tragedy and folly and of dark foreboding. It is about the past-made-present, and our ability to copy blindly and to the very letter the lies and follies of our ancestors. It is about that admonition of antiquity: that if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. For Iraq 1917, read Iraq 2003. For Iraq 1920, read Iraq 2004 or 2005.
Yes, we are preparing to give "full sovereignty" to Iraq. That's also what the British falsely claimed more than 80 years ago. Come, then, and confront the looking glass of history, and see what America and Britain will do in the next 12 terrible months in Iraq.
Our story begins in March 1917 as 22-year-old Private 11072 Charles Dickens of the Cheshire Regiment peels a poster off a wall in the newly captured city of Baghdad. It is a turning point in his life. He has survived the hopeless Gallipoli campaign, attacking the Ottoman empire only 150 miles from its capital, Constantinople. He has then marched the length of Mesopotamia, fighting the Turks yet again for possession of the ancient caliphate, and enduring the grim battle for Baghdad. The British invasion army of 600,000 soldiers was led by Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude, and the sheet of paper that caught Private Dickens's attention was Maude's official "Proclamation" to the people of Baghdad, printed in English and Arabic.
That same 11in by 18in poster, now framed in black and gold, hangs on the wall a few feet from my desk as I write this story of empire and dark prophecy. Long ago, the paper was stained with damp - "foxed", as booksellers say - which may have been Private Dickens's perspiration in the long hot Iraqi summer of 1917. It has been folded many times; witness, as his daughter Hilda would recall 86 years later, to its presence in his army knapsack over many months.
In a letter to me, she called this "his precious document", and I can see why. It is filled with noble aspirations and presentiments of future tragedy; with the false promises of the world's greatest empire, commitments and good intentions; and with words of honour that were to be repeated in the same city of Baghdad by the next great empire more than two decades after Dickens's death. It reads now like a funeral dirge:
"Proclamation... Our military operations have as their object, the defeat of the enemy and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators... Your citizens have been subject to the tyranny of strangers... and your fathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried off to wars not of your seeking, your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in different places. It is the wish not only of my King and his peoples, but it is also the wish of the great Nations with whom he is in alliance, that you should prosper even as in the past when your lands were fertile... But you, people of Baghdad... are not to understand that it is the wish of the British Government to impose upon you alien institutions. It is the hope of the British Government that the aspirations of your philosophers and writers shall be realised once again, that the people of Baghdad shall flourish, and shall enjoy their wealth and substance under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws and with their racial ideals... It is the hope and desire of the British people... that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown amongst the peoples of the Earth... Therefore I am commanded to invite you, through your Nobles and Elders and Representatives, to participate in the management of your civil affairs in collaboration with the Political Representative of Great Britain... so that you may unite with your kinsmen in the North, East, South and West, in realising the aspirations of your Race.
(signed) F.S. Maude, Lieutenant-General, Commanding the British Forces in Iraq."
Private Dickens spent the First World War fighting Muslims, first the Turks at Suvla Bay at Gallipoli and then the Turkish army - which included Iraqi soldiers - in Mesopotamia. He spoke "often and admirably," his daughter would recall, of one of his commanders, General Sir Charles Munro, who at 55 had fought in the last months of the Gallipoli campaign and then landed at Basra in southern Iraq at the start of the British invasion.
But Munro's leadership did not save Dickens's sister's nephew, Samuel Martin, who was killed by the Turks at Basra. Hilda remembers: "My father told of how killing a Turk, he thought it was in revenge for the death of his 'nephew'. I don't know if they were in the same battalion, but they were a similar age, 22 years."
In all, Britain lost 40,000 men in the Mesopotamian campaign. The British had been proud of their initial occupation of Basra. More than 80 years later, Shameem Bhatia, a British Muslim whose family came from Pakistan, would send me an amused letter, along with a series of 12 very old postcards, which were printed by The Times of India in Bombay on behalf of the Indian YMCA. One of them showed British artillery amid the Basra date palms; another a soldier in a pith helmet, turning towards the camera as his comrades tether horses behind him; others the crew of a British gunboat on the Shatt al-Arab river, and the Turkish-held town of Kurna, one of its buildings shattered by British shellfire, shortly before its surrender. The ruins then looked, of course, identical to the Iraqi ruins of today. There are only so many ways in which a shell can smash through a home.
As long ago as 1914, a senior British official was told by "local [Arab] notables" that "we should be received in Baghdad with the same cordiality [as in southern Iraq] and that the Turkish troops would offer little if any opposition". But the British invasion of Iraq had originally failed. When Major-General Charles Townshend took 13,000 men up the banks of the Tigris towards Baghdad, he was surrounded and defeated by Turkish forces at Kut al-Amara. His surrender was the most comprehensive of military disasters, ending in a death march to Turkey for those British troops who had not been killed in battle.
The graves of 500 of them in the Kut War Cemetery sank into sewage during the period of United Nations sanctions that followed Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, when spare parts for the pumps needed to keep sewage from the graves were not supplied to Iraq. Visiting the cemetery in 1998, my colleague Patrick Cockburn found "tombstones... still just visible above the slimy green water. A broken cement cross sticks out of a reed bed... A quagmire in which thousands of little green frogs swarm like cockroaches as they feed on garbage."
Baghdad looked much the same when Private Dickens arrived in 1917. Less than two years earlier, a visitor had described a city whose streets "gaped emptily. The shops were mostly closed... In the Christian cemetery east of the high road leading to Persia, coffins and half-mouldering skeletons were floating. On account of the Cholera which was ravaging the town [three hundred people were dying of it every day] the Christian dead were now being buried on the new embankment of the high road, so that people walking and riding not only had to pass by but even to make their way among and over the graves... There was no longer any life in the town."
The British occupation was dark with historical precedent. There was, of course, no "cordial" reception of British troops in Baghdad. Indeed, Iraqi troops who had been serving with the Turkish army but who "always entertained friendly ideas towards the English" were jailed - not in Abu Ghraib, but in India - and found that while in prison there they were "insulted and humiliated in every way". These same prisoners wanted to know if the British would hand Iraq over to Sherif Hussein of the Hejaz - to whom the British had made fulsome and ultimately mendacious promises of "independence" for the Arab world if he fought alongside the Allies against the Turks - on the grounds that "some of the Holy Moslem Shrines are located in Mesopotamia".
British officials believed that control of Mesopotamia would safeguard British oil interests in Persia (the initial occupation of Basra was ostensibly designed to do that) and that "clearly it is our right and duty, if we sacrifice so much for the peace of the world, that we should see to it we have compensation, or we may defeat our end" - which was not how Lt-Gen Maude expressed Britain's ambitions in his famous proclamation in 1917.
Earl Asquith was to write in his memoirs that he and Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, agreed in 1915 that "taking Mesopotamia... means spending millions in irrigation and development". Which is precisely what President George Bush was forced to do only months after his illegal invasion in 2003.
Those who want to wallow in even more ghastly historical parallels should turn to the magnificent research of the Iraqi scholar Ghassan Attiyah, whose volume on the British occupation was published in Beirut long before Saddam's regime took over Iraq, at a time when Iraqi as well as British archives of the period were still available. Attiyah's Iraq, 1902-1921: A Socio-Political Study, written 30 years before the Anglo-American invasion, should be read by all Western "statesmen" planning to occupy Arab countries.
As Attiyah discovered, the British, once they were installed in Baghdad, decided in the winter of 1917 that Iraq would have to be governed and reconstructed by a "council" formed partly of British advisers "and partly of representative non-official members from among the inhabitants". The copycat 2003 version of this "council" was, of course, the Interim Governing Council, supposedly the brainchild of Maude's American successor, Paul Bremer.
Later, the British thought they would like "a cabinet half of natives and half of British officials, behind which might be an administrative council, or some advisory body consisting entirely of prominent natives". The traveller and scholar Gertrude Bell, who became "oriental secretary" to the British military occupation authority, had no doubts about Iraqi public opinion: "The stronger the hold we are able to keep here the better the inhabitants will be pleased... They can't conceive an independent Arab government. Nor, I confess, can I. There is no one here who could run it."
Again, this was far from the noble aspirations of Maude's proclamation issued * * 11 months earlier. Nor would the Iraqis have been surprised had they been told (which, of course, they were not) that Maude strongly opposed the very proclamation that appeared over his name, and which in fact had been written by Sir Mark Sykes - the very same Sykes who had drawn up the secret 1916 agreement with F Georges-Picot for French and British control over much of the post-war Middle East.
But, by September 1919, even journalists were beginning to grasp that Britain's plans for Iraq were founded upon illusions. "I imagine," the correspondent for The Times wrote on 23 September, "that the view held by many English people about Mesopotamia is that the local inhabitants will welcome us because we have saved them from the Turks, and that the country only needs developing to repay a large expenditure of English lives and English money. Neither of these ideals will bear much examination... From the political point of view we are asking the Arab to exchange his pride and independence for a little Western civilisation, the profits of which must be largely absorbed by the expenses of administration."
Within six months, Britain was fighting a military insurrection in Iraq and David Lloyd George, the prime minister, was facing calls for a military withdrawal. "Is it not for the benefit of the people of that country that it should be governed so as to enable them to develop this land which has been withered and shrivelled up by oppression? What would happen if we withdrew?" Lloyd George would not abandon Iraq to "anarchy and confusion". By this stage, British officials in Baghdad were blaming the violence on "local political agitation, originated outside Iraq", suggesting that Syria might be involved.
Come again? Could history repeat itself so perfectly? For Lloyd George's "anarchy", read any statement from the American occupation power warning of "civil war" in the event of a Western withdrawal. For Syria - well, read Syria.
AT Wilson, the senior British official in Iraq in 1920, took a predictable line. "We cannot maintain our position... by a policy of conciliation of extremists. Having set our hand to the task of regenerating Mesopotamia, we must be prepared to furnish men and money... We must be prepared... to go very slowly with constitutional and democratic institutions."
There was fighting in the Shia town of Kufa and a British siege of Najaf after a British official was murdered. The British demanded "the unconditional surrender of the murderers and others concerned in the plot", and the leading Shia divine, Sayed Khadum Yazdi, abstained from supporting the rebellion and shut himself up in his house. Eleven of the insurgents were executed. A local sheikh, Badr al-Rumaydh, became a target. "Badr must be killed or captured, and a relentless pursuit of the man till this object is obtained should be carried out," a British political officer wrote.
The British now realised that they had made one big political mistake. They had alienated a major political group in Iraq - the ex-Turkish Iraqi officials and officers. The ranks of the disaffected swelled. For Kufa 1920, read Kufa 2004. For Najaf 1920, read Najaf 2004. For Yazdi, read Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. For Badr, read Muqtada al-Sadr.
In 1920, another insurgency broke out in the area of Fallujah, where Sheikh Dhari killed a British officer, Colonel Leachman, and cut rail traffic between Fallujah and Baghdad. The British advanced towards Fallujah and inflicted "heavy punishment" on the tribe. For Fallujah, of course, read Fallujah. And the location of the heavy punishment? Today it is known as Khan Dari - and it was the scene of the first killing of a US soldier by a roadside bomb in 2003.
In desperation, the British needed "to complete the façade of the Arab government". And so, with Winston Churchill's enthusiastic support, the British gave the throne of Iraq to the Hashemite King Faisal, the son of Sherif Hussein, a consolation prize for the man the French had just thrown out of Damascus. Paris was having no kings in its own mandated territory of Syria. Henceforth, the British government - deprived of reconstruction funds by an international recession, and confronted by an increasingly unwilling soldiery, which had fought during the 1914-18 war and was waiting for demobilisation - would rely on air power to impose its wishes.
There are no kings to impose on Iraq today (the former Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan pulled his hat out of the ring just before the invasion), so we have installed Iyad Allawi, the former CIA "asset", as prime minister in the hope that he can provide the same sovereign wallpaper as Faisal once did. Our soldiers can hide out in the desert, hopefully unattacked, unless they are needed to shore up the tottering power of our present-day "Faisal".
And so we come to the immediate future of Iraq. How are we to "control" Iraq while claiming that we have handed over "full sovereignty"? Again, the archives come to our rescue. The Royal Air Force, again with Churchill's support, bombed rebellious villages and dissident tribesmen in Iraq. Churchill urged the employment of mustard gas, which had been used against Shia rebels in 1920.
Squadron Leader Arthur Harris, later Marshal of the Royal Air Force and the man who perfected the firestorm destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and other great German cities in the Second World War, was employed to refine the bombing of Iraqi insurgents. The RAF found, he wrote much later, "that by burning down their reed-hutted villages, after we'd warned them to get out, we put them to the maximum amount of inconvenience, without physical hurt [sic], and they soon stopped their raiding and looting..."
This was what, in its emasculation of the English language, the Pentagon would now call "war lite". But the bombing was not as surgical as Harris's official biographer would suggest. In 1924, he had admitted that "they [the Arabs and Kurds] now know what real bombing means, in casualties and damage; they know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured".
TE Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia - remarked in a 1920 letter to The Observer that "it is odd that we do not use poison gas on these occasions". Air Commodore Lionel Charlton was so appalled at the casualties inflicted on innocent villagers that he resigned his post as Senior Air Staff Officer Iraq because he could no longer "maintain the policy of intimidation by bomb". He had visited an Iraqi hospital to find it full of wounded tribesmen. After the RAF had bombed the Kurdish rebel city of Sulaymaniyah, Charlton "knew the crowded life of these settlements and pictured with horror the arrival of a bomb, without warning, in the midst of a market gathering or in the bazaar quarter. Men, women and children would suffer equally."
Already, we have seen the use of almost indiscriminate air power by the American forces in Iraq: the destruction of homes in "dissident" villages, the bombing of mosques where weapons are allegedly concealed, the slaughter-by-air-strike of "terrorists" near the Syrian border, who turned out to be a wedding party. Much the same policy has been adopted in the already abandoned "democracy" of Afghanistan.
As for the soldiers, we couldn't ship our corpses home in the heat of the Middle East 80 years ago, so we buried them in the great North Wall Cemetery in Baghdad, where they lie to this day, most of them in their late teens and twenties. We didn't hide their coffins. Their last resting place is still there for all to see today, opposite the ruins of the suicide-bombed Turkish embassy.
As for the gravestone of Samuel Martin, it stood for years in the British war cemetery in Basra with the following inscription: "In Memory of Private Samuel Martin 24384, 8th Bn, Cheshire Regiment who died on Sunday 9 April 1916. Private Martin, son of George and Sarah Martin, of the Beech Tree Inn, Barnton, Northwich, Cheshire."
In the gales of shellfire that swept Basra during the 1980-88 war with Iran, the cemetery was destroyed and looted and many gravestones shattered beyond repair. When I visited the cemetery in the chaotic months after the Anglo-American invasion of 2003, I found wild dogs roaming between the broken headstones. Even the brass fittings of the central memorial had been stolen. Sic transit gloria.
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My intent was not to engage in the controversy of interpretations,mythmaking, justifications for or against the Crusades - but simply to note their failures and the reasons for them (incompetent leadership being chiefest)and their ultimate outcomes (failure). It was also to point out the lack of education on the subject. Most folks are completely unaware of the things either of us have said here. Much of what you are saying here is true and relevant- but not to my intended points. The main point being that people limit their imaginations to only two tactics for dealing with conflict- doing nothing- or warfare. This is an extreme limitation on human creativity and potential.
It should be readily apparent that I have no interest in PC one way or the other. I am interested in BC (Biblical correctness. This is not a barb at you or this good information you have supplied by any means- but it is more representative of PC than the line of thinking I am working with. The line I am working from is not PC or widely believed or accepted at all.
P.s.
The first paragraph in the original post does denote the "defensive" posture of those who promoted the Crusades;
"Crusades – A Definition
The Crusades were a series of military missions, usually organized and promoted by the Pope and/or Roman Catholic Church. The crusades took place through the 11th and 13th centuries A.D. The original intent of the crusades was to recapture “Christian” lands that had been invaded by Muslims."
That "defensive" posture still stands today.
That "defensive" posture IS the PC view that downplays all the other nuances and motivators for this conflict- like economics and the balance of power- money and power- the most ancient of narratives.
Visit the posts concerning Robert Gates, the secret wars of the CIA and so forth. There are the true appeasers.
Read the link provided about Britain's occupation of the 1920's.
I would not dispute their reasoning for engaging in the conflict- but take note of the results. When our leaders failed to recognize the potential and probability of extended resistance and planned for glorious victory parades instead of making plans for occupation control and the insurgency they failed to learn from history. That was my point in short.
Just remember that I don't necessarily disagree with the information. I was just on a different point.
That being chiefly that fighting fire with fire, so to speak, has a poor track record for success aside from the moral dilemmas.
Most of what you have offered here is from the Zionist school of thought and is itself shot through with propaganda.
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