CRUSADING JOHN
I don't know that Morse was attempting to justify the Crusades so much as trying to make it clear that the one-sided PC sound bites regarding the evil, "marauding" Christians is only part of the story, forget not the great power plays made between the various European kings and the Vatican and the varying levels of barbarism on both sides. And to characterize the Crusading Europeans as being hostile only tp the Muslims and Jews, as though their ignorance was only directed at non-Christians tells only part of the story too. Remember the sacking of Constantinople (now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople). It's still amazing to me that the Arab world can get so much mileage out of their "vicimization" at the hands of the Crusaders when they had previously won the land by conquest and defeated the European attempt to reclaim the land by conquest. It seems to me, the real beef these Arab Muslims have, from a historic perspective, is with the Turks.