Onward Christian Soldiers!

"I don't think I agree with Beagles about the Crusaders being extinct.  Aren't our forces all over the Mideast like stink on shit with no apparent purpose even as I speak?" - Uncle Ken

The current US involvement in the Middle East is nothing like the Crusades. The Crusaders had a purpose, to evict the heathen infidels from the Holy Land and reclaim it for Christendom. If the current US and allied military effort in the Middle East has a purpose, I don't know what it is. They do take and briefly hold real estate, but they soon abandon it, and the bad guys come right back in. They drop some bombs here, send some troops there, and the conflict goes on and on with no end in sight.

The Crusades got pretty chaotic at times, but at least they started out with a clearly defined goal. The one they call the First Crusade, which was actually the Second Crusade, did succeed in taking the Holy Land and holding it for decades, but the Crusaders were eventually driven back out. There were eight or nine crusades after that, but none of them could duplicate the success of the First Crusade which, as I said, was really the Second Crusade. The original First Crusade was such an embarrassment that they decided not to count it, but they learned enough from their mistakes to make the Second Crusade, which thereafter became known as the First Crusade, successful. For some reason, the learning curve went flat after that. Maybe they had different leadership by then, or maybe the Muslims were faster learners than the Europeans in those days. By some accounts, the Muslim civilization was more advanced than the European civilization, but the Muslims subsequently stalled out, and their culture is stuck in the Middle Ages even unto this day.