Marine Corps Lawyers Claim Crusades Weren’t a Religious War

[cynatnite]

This all started when a fighter squadron wanted to change it's name from "Werewolves" to "Crusaders". They even painted a big crusader shield and cross on their planes.

****

When msnbc.com reported on this story last week, they mentioned the phone call between MRFF’s counsel and the Marine Corps counsel, but this part of the story is so insane that it deserves more attention. Seriously, you ain’t gonna believe the points that General Counsel of the Commandant of the Marine Corps made in his attempt to defend the use of the Crusader name and cross.

The most incomprehensibly unbelievable point advanced by these legal geniuses was that the Crusades were not religious. They were just military in nature, and therefore the term Crusades evokes “military” history, not “religion.” I kid you not. The General Counsel of the Commandant of the Marine Corps DOESN’T THINK THE CRUSADES WERE RELIGIOUS!

These Marine Corps lawyers then asked Ms. Mitchell if a cross always has a religious connotation, and they were ready with an example of one that doesn’t – the X on the Confederate flag! That’s right. Their great example of the secular use of a cross is a symbol that evokes something much better – the Dukes of Hazzard (oh yeah, and racism and slavery, too).

But wait, there’s more! They also asked Ms. Mitchell if the use of the Crusaders name and imagery would be permissible in a theater where the people are “illiterate,” apparently assuming that everyone in the Middle East is illiterate, and that the image of a shield with a cross on it wouldn’t be clear to anyone, whether they could read or not.

They next asked if the usage of this name and imagery would be acceptable in Africa, apparently unaware that there are significant Muslim populations in Africa as well as the Middle East.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/rodda/2012/05/29/marine-corps-lawyers-claim-crusades-werent-a-religious-war/

[freshwest]

1. 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' is being interpreted more literally than it once was:

I don't know what clearer proof we have of persons who hold the 'God, Guns and Gays' stance above the wishes of the Founders. Some people want a theocracy and they're armed. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed this time and the military listened.

Overall, this turned out well. In civilian life, not so good, when we see what the baggers are doing in almost every state, with little opposition because of some believers.

[jwirr]

9. Yes, the song has been used at war time to speak about real war but it is more correctly thought

of as spiritual warfare against the trials and conflicts of life. But then the rw has twisted everything.

[RC]

2. Taking terrorism to the next level.

Apparently murder by drone isn't good enough anymore at creating new terrorists.

[Sherman A1]

3. well if they were not a religious based war executed by military forces

then we might be curious as to just what they might have been. True all warfare pretty much comes down to money in one for or another, but a good deal of religion both past and present comes down to that as well.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. The idiot got "Semper Fidelis" mixed up with "Deus Vult".

[opiate69]

5. Well hell... I`ve been told that exact claim by at least one DUer too

[hifiguy]

6. That is a very "special" kind of stupid.

Clearly, no one involved has ever read a lick of European history.

Werewolves are a lot more scary to the common folk. Sounds better, too.

Asshattery of the first degree all around.

[Igel]

13. I don't know about that.

I think of them as religious wars, but I consider the Islamic Conquest to be religious as well, and when AQ and Hamas blow up kids for blood sport and claim its to glorify Allah, well, that's religious.

On the other hand, there's a kind of myopia in which everything is economic and/or viewed through the lens of social justice and oppression ("and/or" because for some, social justice and oppression are primarily economic). Those would probably paraphrase "Allahu akbar" as "Take that, capitalist running sharks!" or some such mangled combination of Marxist cliches.

In some cases the conflict between religion and economics is clear. There's a reason Islam wasn't proselytized in Africa much but still spread. Not supposed to take Muslims as slaves; all that needs to happen is for a village to hear it's next on the fast boat to Benghazi for export and the shahada rings out--which is a good reason to not let preachers in before the slavers. In other cases there's a nice confluence of religion and economics. Conquering and sacking N. India was both spiritually rewarding, sexually satisfying, and monetarily enticing. (Mix and match those adv. and adj.) Then again, they knew this, having done the same in the ME, N. Africa, and Asia Minor. SE Europe didn't work out quite the same way, although the Ottomans must have been laughing (in their graves) all the way through from about 1990 to the present.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Well, they used planes called "Crusaders" when I was in.

What has 3 wheel, wings that go up and down, and flies only when the sun shines?

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. I am sure the Popes who called for them

were just Marine Corp officers doing their duty to country.

[jwirr]

10. Exactly and Jerusalem was to goal because it was a big city!

Someone in the Marines has to go back to school. Maybe as far back as elementary school since that is where I first studied the idea of the crusades.

[Mairead]

11. They weren't. They had religious wrappings, but they weren't religiously motivated

because, with vanishingly few exceptions, members of the ruling classes only feign being religious. For them, religion is a tool to control the peasants.

[HopeHoops]

12. That's really far beyond ignorant.

[petronius]

14. This seems like a situation where perception and modern usage is more important

than a history dissertation on the Crusades. I'm sure it's certainly true that there were social, economic, and political motivations for the Crusades to complement the religious motives, and I'm sure the balance of those factors varied both within and between the individual Crusades. But today, almost nobody thinks of the Crusades as anything but religious wars, and for American forces to show up with religious symbology and that specific historical reference is going to communicate a message whether the USMC wants to or not...