Laurabelle's Blog

Yesterday as I was waking up I heard some commentary on NPR which mirrored some thoughts I had heard myself, namely the similarities between this coming war and the crusades. Of course I'm simplifying and condensing all the crusades into one, which is not fair to the complexity of that history, but I don't know that history well enough to make a truly valid argument. (If I did, I'd be presenting it on NPR or in my doctoral dissertation, not on a little blog like this.)

• The crusades were supposedly about liberating the Holy Land. This war in Iraq is supposedly about liberating Iraq's people from an EvilDictator™.
• It's all about religion, Christianity vs. Islam. Crusades were about recapturing Jerusalem from its Islamic rulers. This war is (supposedly) about fighting the Islamic allies (or at least co-AxisOfEvil™ members), Al Qaeda and Iraq.
• It's all about wealth: gold, treasures, oil. Take your pick. Mmm, looting and pillaging.
• It's all about distracting the nation from the problems at home.
• Once you've won (if you've won — it's not so easy to win an offensive war far from home, with a long supply line), you've got to stick around to hold onto your conquests and recreate stability. The First Crusade led to the founding of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187), which lasted until Saladin came along and destroyed it. If the US wins, we will have to create a new country from the ashes. How democratic and stable will it be, how long will we have to stay, and how long until someone else destroys it?

I think the crusades are pretty universally regarded as pointless, destructive, and generally negative. (The one positive thing I can think of is that they led to greater European familiarity with Middle Eastern culture and technological developments such as paper, but they didn't need to go to war for that.) The fact that we're emulating it so closely again is frightening, especially since the supposedly reasons I cite are the same ones given for the crusades, and the same ones that everyone agrees are nonsense. Have we not learned at all from history?

Yes, I'm really pessimistic, and probably in denial. I wish we weren't going to war. I wish I felt there were something I could do about it. I wish I lived in a nation that didn't cave in to the fear of terrorism. Am I the only one who cares more for the erosion of my civil liberties than for the risk of another terrorist attack?