Tenth Crusade
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Tenth Crusade is a term sometimes used by those opposed to the US-led occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States of America. The term is meant to liken the so-called War on Terrorism to the Crusades— a series of conflicts supported and sometimes led by European religious and political leaders with the intent of defending Christendom. The original purposes of these crusades were to occupy Christian 'Holy' lands surrounding Jerusalem that were, at that time, controlled by Islamic and Turkish rule.
As the Crusades are often, some would say unfairly,characterized in contemporary works as largely being motivated by greed and being based upon fabricated tales of wrong-doing by Muslims against Christianity, the connotation in using this term implies that the US-led invasions of these Middle Eastern countries are based on similarly unjust motives and/or are motivated by Christian faith and anti-Islamic beliefs.
US President George W. Bush used the phrase "this crusade, this war on terrorism" in a press conference (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html) on September 16, 2001, causing significant controversy in Europe and many Arab countries. He would later apologized and retract the statement, choosing the current term, the War on Terror. Opponents of President G. W. Bush point to this as a sign of his faith-based initiatives and his religiously-minded goals concerning foreign relations; his supporters prefer to note that, in current popular culture, the word 'Crusade' is most often used in a non-religious context.
Example Quotations
- US President George W. Bush, from a press conference (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html) upon arrival at the White House, September 16, 2001.
- "We need to go back to work tomorrow and we will. But we need to be alert to the fact that these evil-doers still exist. We haven't seen this kind of barbarism in a long period of time. No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society and then emerging all in the same day to fly their aircraft — fly U.S. aircraft into buildings full of innocent people — and show no remorse. This is a new kind of — a new kind of evil. And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient. But I can assure the American people I am determined, I'm not going to be distracted, I will keep my focus to make sure that not only are these brought to justice, but anybody who's been associated will be brought to justice. Those who harbor terrorists will be brought to justice. It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century."
- Alexander Cockburn, "The Tenth Crusade (http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn0907.html)," Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org/), September 7, 2002.
- "Islamic fanatics flew those planes a year ago and here we are with a terrifying alliance of Judaeo-Christian fanatics, conjoined in their dreams of the recovery of the Holy Lands of the West Bank, Judaea and Samaria. War on Terror? It's back to the late thirteenth century, picking up where Prince Edward left off with his ninth crusade after St Louis had died in Tunis with the word Jerusalem on his lips."