HEADLINE: Parallels between the Crusades and postwar occupation of Iraq
ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS
BODY: BOB EDWARDS, host:
The Bush administration acknowledged this week that it has no idea how long a postwar occupation of Iraq would last, nor how much it would cost. Critics argue that America is lurching toward a modern version of the Medieval crusader kingdom. Historian James Reston Jr. says it's no wonder so many militant Muslims believe that that ancient metaphor applies today.
JAMES RESTON Jr.:
Even in the first Crusade in the years 1095 to 1098 AD, the European victory over Arab forces came with the massacre of thousands of Arab defenders. The streets of Jerusalem, it was said, ran ankle deep in blood. When the killing was over, the Crusaders stripped off their armor, repaired to the Holy Sepulchre, fell to their knees in a ceremony of pious self-congratulation.
The Arab world intensely remembers this history 900 years later. This is the first lesson of Western crusades. The Arab blood that is spilled by overpowering Western force will be remembered for generations. Resentment in that part of the world runs deep.
The second lesson of the Crusades goes to the matter of occupation. After Jerusalem fell, crusading soldiers had accomplished what they came to do. The cities emptied, and few Europeans remained to defend them. Crusades, we now know, are open-ended. They involve not just the war, but its long and tedious aftermath. And the two cannot be separated.
The third lesson comes in the establishment of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. It lasted 80 years, from 1098 to 1187 AD. But in those 80 years, there was never peace. The occupiers and the natives were separated by too vast a gulf of culture and religion.
It was the great Saladin, the supreme hero of the Arab world, conqueror of the West, the lance of jihad, who brought the Arab resistance to its culmination. He could defeat the might of the West only by uniting a thousand far-flung Arab tribes. It took outside aggression and foreign occupation to unite those tribes into a successful countercrusade.
It's no mystery then why the memorials to Saladin dot the Arab world today, nor is it a mystery why so many modern Arab leaders over the years have attempted to don the mantle of Saladin. No doubt as America establishes its modern crusader kingdom in Iraq, there will be many more Arab leaders who seek to do the same in the future.
The last lesson comes from the Third Crusade of Richard the Lionheart. Richard I of England amassed the greatest force of the Middle Ages to confront Saladin. At first his allies were the Germans and the French, but their armies were to dissipate in the dust and the quicksand of the Middle East. Richard had to go it alone.
When he approached Jerusalem, he finally had his Epiphany. Reconsidering his entire enterprise, he decided to give it up and withdraw. He had no doubt that he could take the city. His force was overwhelming. But the problem of the First Crusade haunted him. Who, after the military victory, would volunteer to stay then, and for the next 80 years?
One can only hope that these historical lessons have come into play somewhere in America's war deliberations. It would be a tragedy if, like Richard the Lionheart, George Bush's Epiphany comes too late.
EDWARDS: The comments of James Reston Jr., author of "Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade." He's currently a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
by Editor on March 14, 2003 at 4:20 PM