Making Crusading Great Again?
Would St Augustine have considered the US attack on Iran a just war? The pope and the vice president are split on the matter.
Pete Hegseth, self-styled US secretary of war, has repeatedly depicted the current conflict in the Middle East as a religious one. Back in 2020, in his book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, he called for a ‘360-degree holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom’. This war, he asserted, needed to be fought against the woke left internally, but against Islam externally. The two complementary threats were conflated, because Islamic infiltration of Christendom was taking place under a woke aegis. In 1095 Pope Urban II had acted against the existential menace of Islam by proclaiming the First Crusade: ‘Enjoy Western civilization? Justice? Freedom under the law? Thank a crusader.’ They are all consequences of the Christian triumphs over Islam in the 11th and 12th centuries. The medieval crusading spirit whence they flow needs now to be rekindled against the renewed Islamic threat.
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