Messianic Interventionism, Crusading, and Syria.

In reading McCullough’s first chapter a funny thing happened to me: I found myself agreeing with the arguments for American intervention in Cuba against the Spanish. Intervention into a situation like the one that was occurring in Cuba seems to me to be one of the few instances where the sum of the arithmetic of jus ad bellum ends with a positive number. 

Just as I was in our reading of Ebel’s book last week, I was struck by the use of the word crusade to describe America’s military action against Spain. While the word crusade at this point in our history has very negative connotations, this obviously was not the case in the not too distant past.  However, I am unaware of the usage of the word in the primary sources of the Civil War, nor do I remember hearing about its usage surrounding the Revolution, the War of 1812, etc.  A search online came up with little of use.

The title of Dr. McCullough’s dissertation includes the words “Messianic Interventionism,” and the last subheading of his conclusion includes this term in relation to the Great War, where the word crusade was used often to describe America’s efforts in the war.  I would be curious to know Dr. McCullough’s opinion on whether or not the idea of the crusading solider is essential in understanding the “Messianic Interventionism” that he sees as a theme in the historiography of American Religion and War.

I also have a second question.  McCullough describes the arguments of Ernest Tuveson, stating, "Writing in the midst of the Cold War, facing the early days of Vietnam, and looking back to both World Wars, Tuveson perceptively labeled this “active messianism” a “recessive gene”: “in the right situation” he argued, “it could become dominant. Here Tuveson captured the lasting relevance of the conception of American identity articulated with such devotion in 1898, as it has survived in albeit chastened forms."[1]  With our seeming recent loss of nerve in intervening in the use of chemical weapons in Syria, does Dr. McCullough still see the idea of this “messianism” as being alive and well?

[1]McCollough, Matthew. ““My Brother’s Keeper”: Civil Religion, Messianic Interventionism, and the Spanish-American War of 1898.” PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2011, 225.