Crusading with OBL

I noticed that John Ray’s “Dissecting Leftism” today has a link to a Thomas Woods article criticising the PC version (or is it the Monty Python version?) of the history of the Crusades. Readers interested in this issue should check out the work of historian Thomas Madden who is a crusades specialist.

Madden dispels some popular myths about the Crusades here but perhaps more importantly points out how mythology about the crusades impacts modern foreign policy debate here.

If the Muslims won the crusades (and they did), why the anger now? Shouldn’t they celebrate the crusades as a great victory? Until the nineteenth century that is precisely what they did. It was the West that taught the Middle East to hate the crusades. During the peak of European colonialism, historians began extolling the medieval crusades as Europe’s first colonial venture. By the 20th century, when imperialism was discredited, so too were the crusades. They haven’t been the same since. In other words, Muslims in the Middle East - including bin Laden and his creatures - know as little about the real crusades as Americans do. Both view them in the context of the modern, rather than the medieval world. The truth is that the crusades had nothing to do with colonialism or unprovoked aggression. They were a desperate and largely unsuccessful attempt to defend against a powerful enemy.

That’s the thing about bin Laden, he is a troublesome mix of the modern and the medieval. He and his lieutenants regularly fulminate about the “nation,” a reference to a Muslim political unity that died in the seventh century. They evoke an image of the crusades colored with the legacy of modern imperialism. And they call for jihad, demanding that every Muslim in the world take part. In short, they live in a dream world, a desert cloister where the last thousand years only partially happened.

To continue reading about this debate see here. This article describes how the PC version of the Crusades distorts most media discussion of the roots of the conflicts in modern mid-east.

Why do educated, allegedly objective members of the media attempt to inculcate such distorted views of history in Americans’ minds? Several theories come to mind. One is that the leftward tilt of the media predisposes them to a critical view of the West, in particular in the realm of religious matters. Many in the media being themselves irreligious, are appalled by putative Christians fighting a holy war like the Crusades. And being critical of Western civilization, they automatically defer to non-Westerners when it comes to defining their own concepts, such as “jihad.” Most journalists are rather ignorant of history but they do have some vague idea that European-American civilization has oppressed and exploited the rest of the world, particularly Muslims; this makes media types sympathetic to non-Westerners.

None of this, of course, excuses such drivel as PBS, A & E and U.S. News have produced lately. And in fact “it would be funny, this journalistic malpractice, if it didn’t buttress the convictions of the fanatics....” And, I might add, reinforce the anti-Western prejudices of our own young people.

The anti-crusader stance is usually liberally salted with buckets of anti-Christian or anti-Catholic tut-tutting by modern secularist liberal and social democrats who fail to see any similarity between (allegedly hypocritical) Crusader atrocities and the worse atrocities committed by modern secularist liberal and social democrats in what General Eisenhower called “The Crusade in Europe”. Let’s not even mention Japan.

Furthermore, that there is at least some kind of symbiotic relationship between the anti-western ideologies pushed in the western media and the actions of terrorists has, of course, been demonstrated elsewhere, notably the Bali bombers’ legal defence team quoting Michael Moore as an authority and Osama Bin Laden’s rehash of Moore’s “My Pet Goat” jibe. We shouldn’t be surprised if PC mythology blows up in our faces.

(P.S. It’s fascinating that the Australian left, generally supporters of the Australian led peacekeeping mission in East Timor, themselves somewhat embarrassed that it was a conservative government that overturned previous Labor governments’ realpolitik “see no evil” stance over Jakarta’s annexation, seem to deny or ignore or otherwise blank out any kind of ‘blowback’ connection between Timor and the Bali bombings, even going so far as to repaint Bali terrorism as blowback for Australian military participation in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, which, of course, came later!)

Posted by Guest Blogger on Monday, May 30, 2005 at 07:12 AM in Liberalism & the Left
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Comments:

Posted by Geoff M. Beck on May 30, 2005, 03:06 PM | #

I own this book: it strips out all the layers of fable and misinterpretation that has been attached to the crusades over the past centuries.

While I agree with his conclusions, in no-way would I use them to justify or denounce today’s war in Iraq.

Posted by dissidentman on May 30, 2005, 11:25 PM | #

The idea of the crusades was not without justice, as they were fought for defensive and reclamative purposes. The war on terror, on the other hand, is only being fought to advance the narrow ethnic agenda of the Ziocons as well as the the lunatic prophecy-fullfillment agenda of American Christian fundamentalists. On the whole few other players have any much to gain of value to them. (I don’t hear of much oil flowing to oilmen. The Iraqis won’t permit that.)

Also, unlike American GI’s taking potshots from fortified positions the crusaders put their lives on the line. Although Jerusalem did not “flow with blood” (Thomas Madden points out that this is physically impossible), it may simply allude to the fact that the crusaders understood the unpleasant realities of conquest. If you want to actually control cities you have to subdue the population with stern measures. I’m actually glad that those conducting the war on Terror haven’t absorbed this knowledge though, because I do sympathise with the Iraqis and the Afghanistanis, both of whom did not wrong Richard Perle or Paul Wofowitz or Dubya or Pat Robertson or Conrad Black etc..

Posted by Arcane on May 31, 2005, 02:46 AM | #

dissident, you said:

unlike American GI’s taking potshots from fortified positions the crusaders put their lives on the line.

I don’t know what dreamworld you’re living in, but if you think that American, as well as British, Polish, and the myriad of other nation’s, soldiers are only fighting from fortified positions and are not putting their lives on the line every day patrolling the streets and hunting people down, then you must be a very ignorant individual.

I do sympathise with the Iraqis and the Afghanistanis

At least you’re honest about your treason… you have no honor.

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 31, 2005, 12:52 PM | #

> Sympathize

Perhaps not the best word. But I ascribe the very worst motivations to the Neo-Con and militarist cabal that governs America. In this light the motives of those fighting against American power in Iraq seem a logical consequence of our actions. I agree with Phil’s review of Imperial Hubris

(I supported the Afgan affair, though our role there needs to be re-examined)

As far as our American boys, I say, “come home!”: we’ve got a war to fight on and in our own borders!

Posted by dissidentman on May 31, 2005, 05:29 PM | #

As far as our American boys, I say, “come home!”: we’ve got a war to fight on and in our own borders!

The MSM and the ruling class have to be toppled first before anything can be done about. They are, after all, a fifth column opening the city gates for the invaders. On a positive note though, I believe that groups such as the minutemen are helping in a small way by drawing public attention to reality.

Posted by ben tillman on May 31, 2005, 07:18 PM | #

http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/t/t0332700.html

Treason: Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.

How does sympathy for Iraqis and Afghanis fit that definition? It does not constitute waging war, and the Iraqis and the Afghanis our not enemies of the purported sovereign, the American people!

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