Re: The Word \"Crusade\"
In English "crusade" with a capital "C" refers to the attempts to retake the Holy Land from Islam and set up a Christian kingdom in the middle east during the 11th to 13th centuries. With a lower-case "c" it means "a remedial enterprise undertaken with zeal and enthusiasm" according to Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. Clearly that is the common meaning that President Bush had in mind, and he was not aware of what a touchy word this still is in the Muslim world.
Now someone has told him and I'm sure the word will be avoided in the future. No harm, no foul.
Most Americans (and I daresay most non-Muslims) don't associate the word "Crusade" with the wars of 1,000 years ago, dimly remembered as they are in the West. But they are a central fact of Islamic history, and especially important to radical fringe movements like Bin Laden's which, in effect, are an attempt to reverse the last 500 to 1,000 years of world history. Anybody who thinks that this is about Israel, or the United State's involvement in the Middle East over the past 50 years is mistaken.
This is a war between a corrupt and twisted interpretation of Islam and all of Western Civilization. Bin Laden doesn't hate Israel because its people are Jews, or even because they displaced the Palestinians. (That is merely a good excuse for recruiting among the Palestinians.) He hates Israel because it is an outpost of the West in the center of Muslim lands.
Bin Laden thinks that the spread of Islam should not have been halted at the gates of Vienna, and that the Moors should never have been driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. He blames all of the worlds ills on secular governments of every stripe, and wants the entire world to be ruled by an Islamic Theocracy, one that preaches
his brand of Islam, and in which no other beliefs or views are tolerated.
The modern phase of this war did not begin with the establishment of Israel in 1948. It began with the Arab defeat in the Six Day War of 1967, when Bin Laden was an impressionable 10 year old. That's when some splinter Muslim groups decided that a tiny country like Israel could only have defeated the mass armies of several Arab nations if God himself had ordained it.
They believed that the secular governments of the Arab states were responsible for the defeat, and that only Islamic governments would defeat Israel. This is the tradition that led to the revolution in Iran, and the tradition that Bin Laden embraced as he grew up. (To the horror of his own government and his family, both of which expelled him.)
If Israel ceased to exist tomorrow, Bin Laden and those who share his views would not end their struggle, because that is just one of their goals. They want to absolutely purge the current Muslim world of the "cancer" of pluralistic, egalitarian Western influences as a first step. Then they want to overthrow non-Islamic regimes, one by one. The United States is their primary target, because as long as the U.S. is a superpower and engaged in world affairs, they have little chance of destabilizing regimes and fomenting revolutions around the world.
They want us either destroyed, or so frightened that we will retreat into an isolationist shell, leaving them free to bring down our allies one by one, until only we are left and they can use their captured resources to destroy us. (Hitler had much the same plan, which is why he ignored U.S. provocations in the North Atlantic and refused to declare war on us until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor - doing do in the foolish belief that the Japanese would declare war on the Soviet Union as a
quid pro quo.)
The word "crusade" (which derives from the word "crux" or "cross") should be avoided because even Muslims who do
not share Bin Laden's view of Islamic history find the term distasteful, thinking only of the "Crusades" But the reality is that this will be a crusade in the common English usage, the one that Dwight Eisenhower had in mind when he told the troops embarking for D-Day that they were about to begin a great crusade to liberate Europe. That was a crusade of largely Chrisitian nations fighting other largely Chrisitian nations, and clearly had no religious component.
The current war is a battle between the civilized world and muderous terrorists, some of whom happen to belong to an especially vicious cult. But the war is not going to stop with Bin Laden and his group. There are numerous links between otherwise unrelated terrorist organizations, from the PLO, Islamic Jihad and Al Queda to the IRA, the Red Brigade and the Basque separatists in Spain. They share intelligence, resources and training facilities. They help members of "brother groups" with logisitics and transportation. And they are all supported by the same rogue nations who support Bin Laden.
It isn't only Muslim states that want to bring down western civilization. There are plenty of other radical belief systems antithetical to our values, and the terrorist states are more than happy to use any stick to beat us with. These groups will
also be the targets of the new international anti-terrorist efforts. Bin Laden may be the first, but the list is long and growing.
Regards,
Joe
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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
