The War On Terror, The Duke would feel safe assuming, is probably the most politically polarising event in my lifetime. It's one of those turning-point type deals, when the "youth" and all that suddenly find their ideologies solidified. Just like Vietnam, or the miners strike, or when Metallica cut their hair and put on make-up round about '96, folks who never really paid much attention one way or the other before, suddenly they find themselves up to the eyeballs in "opinions".

Ironically enough, The Duke had to give up the old politics a year before 9/11, so when all those folks went out protesting and marching in Belfast, I was indoors nursing a severe dose of the fucked-up. There were no such severe emotional hangovers keeping James Carroll from participating, though.

He may not have put on one of those gas-mask things and walked up and down the high-street yelling about The War For Oil, but he did continue to write his column for The Boston Globe, finding that his musings on everyday-type deals were undergoing a metamorphism of sorts, that he was now, in fact, spending his time at the keyboard concocting an ongoing chronicle of The War On Terror, ie, the war everyone is so opinionated regarding.

A collection of these articles, Crusade - Chronicles Of An Unjust War, has been published by Metropolitan Books, and The Duke feels compelled to relate that the resulting tome is a marvel.

Carroll's articles begin just after 9/11, go on to cover the attacks on Afghanistan, the hostilities concerning Israel and Palestine, the invasion of Iraq, and conclude with the release of Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ.

It might seem odd that it concludes with a couple of pieces concerning the exploitation flick about Jesus, but in the context of Carroll's arguments, it makes perfect sense. Gibson's film takes the story of a religious figure who preached love, peace, all that jazz, and condenses it into two hours of gore-strewn rage. Carroll's assessment of the piece ("An obscene movie", he decides) has little to do with the artistic merits of such, but the fact that it is indicative of the shift in religious thinking from the progressive ideals of pacifism and love, of resurrection and rebirth, back in the direction of hate, vengeance, violent retribution. In contemporary Christian fundamentalism, Carroll argues, the cross, the symbol of suffering and pain, is more important than the resurrection which, by all accounts, took place a couple days later. Good Friday is more important than Easter.

Throughout the book, Carroll discusses the events since 9/11 in these terms. He places particular emphasis on George W Bush's defining reference to "this Crusade, this war on terror".

To Carroll's mind, he has done just that; led a Crusade.

In case you didn't know, what happened back in the day was that The Pope decided that the best thing to do for to keep The Church in so prominent a position, and to reignite the evangelical flames so dimming in the faithful, was to instigate a war against all enemies of Christ. The resulting Crusade, you may have read, was a thing of utmost repugnant barbarity. A campaign of spiteful slaughter. As Carroll notes; "With the Crusades, the violent theology of the killer God came into its own."