[aimhigh]

If it wasn't for the crusades, we'd all be speaking Arabic now.

[11bravo]

The east verses west conflict can best be exemplified by the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. It was there that King Leonidas and a few hundred of his elite Spartan palace guard held off the hoards of Xerxes, the Persian King, for three days. This allowed time for the collective armies of Greece to assemble. This conflict was neither Judeo-Christian or Muslim. It was a fundamental clash of the underlying ideology and philosophy of the east and the west. Then as now the superior culture will prevail.

[farmer18th]

If it wasn't for the crusades, we'd all be speaking Arabic now.

Amen. Too bad they didn't have a homestead act on the middle east right after they took Jerusalem. Bin Laden would have been Ozzie Lindstrom now, a Protestant electrician in the Christian city of Urbania, (Kabul), raising four kids and watching his mutual funds on line.