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In the Sept. 9, 2007, edition of The New York Times, a cover feature on presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani carried the headline "The Crusader," a tribute to his reputation as a crime-fighting mayor and to his tough talk against terrorism. The following day in my hometown newspaper, an editorial headline read: "Governor's tax-cut crusade sidesteps hard facts on schools." In the old days, Americans read the work of "crusading reporters." And in my childhood I enjoyed the cartoon adventures of Crusader Rabbit.

Crusade turns out to be a versatile word.

The figurative use of "crusade" goes back at least to 1786 when Thomas Jefferson urged a correspondent to "Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance." I found that reference in the Oxford English Dictionary under this secondary definition: "An aggressive movement or enterprise against some public evil ..."

But that great dictionary, a work of the late 19th century, offers this primary historical meaning: "A military expedition undertaken by the Christians of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Mohammedans." A thousand years after the first Crusades, Islamic fanatics in the Middle East refer to invading American and European forces as "crusaders." The word is a favorite of that spelunking meshuggeneh Osama Bin Laden.

In the early days after 9/11, I wrote that President George W. Bush had said many of the right words of grief, consolation, anger and determination. But one Sunday, of all days, he said the wrong word to the nation and the world: crusade.

The president was speaking off the cuff and stumbled to find the word needed to describe a sustained effort to defeat the sources of terrorism. But he said it, nonetheless. Crusade.

President Bush is many things but is not by reputation the kind of person who, by disposition or education, would be alert to word etymology or connotation. But these things matter, especially in the context of politics, war and religion. George Orwell revealed for us, in his essay "Politics and the English Language," written after World War II, how the corruption of language leads to political corruption, and vice versa, a tendency that affects all ideologies. And I've twice heard Norman Mailer argue that we should judge political candidates in part by their facility with language (think Lincoln, Churchill, FDR, JFK, Reagan vs. Harding, Nixon, Johnson and Bush).

The word "crusade" derives from the Latin word "crux," which means "cross." (We've adopted the word into English as in "the crux of the matter.") A crusade is a war fought under the sign of the cross. Make no mistake about it, "crusade" is the Christian synonym for "jihad," the Islamic concept of holy war. To the ears of Muslims, the word "crusade" bears a millennium of bad history.

In the history of the West, the Crusades referred to those military campaigns fought over three centuries with the purpose of capturing Jerusalem from Muslim "infidels." (That word, still in use by religious extremists in the 21th century, derives from Latin for "those not of the faith." A version of the word appears in the Marine motto "Semper Fidelis" or "always faithful.")

While many of us have grown up with romantic legends associating the Crusades with gallantry and heroism, Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart, historians view them as a disaster, a military and cultural failure, and a driving force of anti-Semitism in the West.

"Participation in the Crusade," writes one historian, "was presented as having great spiritual value for the individual crusader. It was regarded as an act of atonement and as an opportunity to gain the merit, or 'credit' in Heaven, of having been to the Holy Land." Those who crashed planes into the Twin Towers were motivated by a distorted Islamic version of the same reward, an eternity of heroic glory.

By describing our response to terrorism as a crusade, the president slipped, and to his credit and those of his advisers, he recovered by taking back the word. But some words cannot be unspoken. Once they vibrate the air, they take on a life of their own. That is why my crusade against 'crusade' will continue to warn our leaders, our opinion makers, our headline writers to be attuned to language -- to a word's origin, history, connotation, and shifts of meaning -- especially when the stakes are high.  Staying in tune is one of the writer's most serious duties. Remember: What many now call the Holocaust, the German engineers of genocide termed the "final solution."


Before we cross over to another topic, permit me to riff on the cross currents of language and meaning. A character in an 1839 Charles Dickens' novel asks of a woman, "Why is she so excruciatingly beautiful?" The speaker would not be the first lover tortured by the beauty of a woman, nor the last. But few modern readers of the phrase will recognize the painful origins of that adverb.

Like "crux" and "crusade," the word "excruciate" derives from the Latin word for cross. It comes from the same root as "crucifixion," which means 'cruci figere,' to fix on a cross. In Greek and Roman history, crucifixion was seen as the most painful and humiliating form of public execution, which helps give the story of Christ's death so much poignancy and power.

I found myself using the word in a sentence that describes a scene in one of the Harry Potter books.  As punishment, a horrible teacher makes Harry write over and over again the line "I must not lie." But he must use a demonic pen, one that marks whatever he writes not only on the page, but in a painful bloody wound on the back of his hand. Over time, these wounds recur, and as Harry becomes more heroic and sacrificial, take on the sense of the stigmata, the wounds in the hands of Christ.

In my essay, I describe Harry's wounds as "excruciating." At first I did not intend the thematic associations with the Jesus story, nor would I expect any reader to make that connection. But I made it. And I've come to love it. Which can be one reward for not just using language but living inside it.