Could the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be described as modern crusades?

Answer 1

There are certainly some who would make that allusion, but it is more hyperbole than honesty. The term Crusade is applied very loosely in the modern age, but when the Crusades were fought, there was a belief in all of the European countries that the future of civilization and the viability of the Christian/European way of life in the long term was questionable. In their view the "evil Mohammedan forces" could well extinguish Christian virtue. The wars were an outgrowth of this fear that Christendom's future hung in the balance and that Jerusalem would be a bell-weather of what Europe would become. Therefore, serving in the Crusade was a holy act of defending one's identity and purpose in life.

The current wars in the Middle East are much more political and have far less of such an overall tone of "Western civilization could well fail..." because such thoughts are categorically unrealistic. Some compare the wars in the Middle East because of common plot-elements like the fact that Western countries are invading and occupying territories in Middle Eastern countries. The motivation and purpose, though, regardless of the myriad of reasons proposed, are never seen as religious zealotry and the idea that a person's very sense of self was compromised by events taking place in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A modern war that could be described as a modern Crusade without hyperbole would be the the Greek Independence Wars. The Greek forces and foreign volunteers sought to liberate the Greeks from the Ottomans because (according to them) the very culture of the Greeks and Greek religion was under siege from "evil Mohammedan forces" who did nothing other than prevent the flowering of a historically relevant Western center.