President Obama reminded Americans this week that while the murdering Islamists are beheading children, raping women and burning people alive, we can’t get on our high horse.  After all, there were the crusades.

Please.  We are long past (800 years past) the point where we should be trying to compare current atrocities to anything that occurred during the crusades.

I’m outraged by the mayhem occurring in the Middle East.  And there is absolutely no reason for me to temper that concern because of something that happened hundreds of years ago.  A past wrong doesn’t diminish a current atrocity.

In the middle of the last century, America fought a rather bloody war with Germany and Japan.  Both those countries clearly had lost their moral compass and engaged in despicable acts.  But 70 years later, Americans are buying Japanese cars and computers.  Germany is an important ally.  I even like the German soccer team.

But those crusaders?  Bad guys.  Ill-tempered.  Violent.  Murdering Franks.  They were so awful that I can never hold any other murdering butcher to account.

Nuts.

But just to give this a little important context…the crusades were a defensive action to confront Muslim armed invasion.  In that sense, I guess you can draw a comparison to what is happening today – except we can’t seem to get today’s crusade off the ground.  Perhaps we’ve seen our last crusade.