Quote Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
Yes, the area was in constant war. The Muslims then came in and conquered the place. Then the Christians came back and fought them. The crusades in that light seem to be merely a continuation of normality for the area, not some amazing alteration due to the West.
You don't know too much of the academic discussion about the whys of the Crusades, do you ? Hint: internal developements in the Catholic portion feature prominently. So do the at the time recently arrived Turks. And the fact the Byzantines had just gotten a serious licking from the aforementioned nasty steppe nomads.

The Crusades had the unpleasant side effect of firing up a whole new wave of appreciation of the until then almost forgotten military dimension of the jihad concept though and a general shall we say turn towards militant values, and had their part in the processes that for example led to Egypt being taken over by the Mamluk military regime (which was eventually taken over by the Ottomans, but anyway).

Oh yes, they had long-lasting effects indeed.

More concretely, however, firebrand nationalists and other rabble-rousers in the area have in the recent years found the whole issue a really good blunt instrument in the best nationalist fashion. Bush's infamous use of the term "crusade" to describe the Second Gulf War can only be considered the height of short-sighted stupidity in the context.

No, rather the more simple fact that the West can not be blamed for the despots that are there, since they have been there long before the West was aware that the area existed.
Given that the standard Cold War games of proxy regimes and sycophants were played there as they were in any other strategically vital region (the US has had an essentially permanent military presence on the Gulf since something like the Thirties...), this postulation is pretty absurd. Do I even need to point out the Shah of Iran, who managed his country in such a popular fashion as to get deposed by a religious-populist uprising, had been reinstated to autocratic power by outright Western (primarily American) support...?

Not that "the West" had been particularly adverse to any despots in the region anyway. One of the major reasons the "great unwashed" there tend to hold such low opinions of the West has to be the fact they can well perceive the hypocrisy in piously talking about promoting democracy, freedom and suchlike on one hand and cheerfully cutting oil deals with and supporting patently autocratic regimes on the other. Kinda eats at the "street cred" of the whole idea, you know ?