In Whose Name?

(The U.S. war in Iraq lasted from 2003-2011. I published the first version of the following essay in 2007, about the midpoint of that war.).

Reading more books about Islam, I’ve been trying to piece together histories never taught in school. Somewhere around 25-30 books are under my belt now, but I'm not sure I'm making much progress. The latest was The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf, which left me horrified at the wanton bloodshed caused by both sides during that inglorious era.

This account is the reverse of the history taught in the West. It maintains that some of the Crusaders acted as cannibals, hunting Arab villagers down for food. Do you know how the Cult of the Assassins came about? This book documents that and other atrocities. 

I often find myself speculating how those populations of Jews, Christians, and Moslems persisted side by side in the Middle East for millenia, albeit with major pogroms launched against Jews, and wars between the other two now and again. But, still, in the in-between times, the regular times when there was no great war, how did they get along?

Unfortunately, this book doesn’t help answer that question.

The Jews, the Christians, the Moslems, each with their holy books, all overlapping and originating in the same cradle of civilization. And now very much at war, in our time, with an American president who summoned the awful cry of the Crusaders in his call to action following 9/11, apparently not knowing how his words would reverberate throughout the Islamic world. 

Or maybe he did know.

The political leaders of both major parties in the U.S. cannot summon the courage to admit this country has made a major mistake by invading Iraq, and that is frightening evidence that the war was never about anything more than securing our massive supply of oil, rationalized as a mission to "democratize" the Middle East.

A thousand years ago, when Crusaders entered Jerusalem, massacred the Moslems, burned the Jews alive in their synagogue, and killed even their fellow Christians, it was in their quest for economic conquest under the cover of missionary zeal.

Sound familiar?

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