While you are correct about commoners defending their homelands against much larger professional armies, a huge factor in many of these instances, and in particular the Crusades and Vietnam, have to do with logistics. In both cases, each successive invading army continued to fail to properly plan and prepare and formulate a strategy of logistics for their own army as well as the indigenous armies. The generals, priests, and monarchs calling the shots for the Crusaders just couldn't come together to agree on anything, and hence, they started to lose money and supplies, which left the Crusaders stranded and starving. The Crusaders that realized this are the ones that said "this is stupid, this is folly", and secretly diverted monies and treasures used to pay and supply them into hidden caches and vaults, or to outright sack one of their own strongholds (all before they were formally disbanded and all burned at the stake). Vietnam was almost the same thing, just replace secret gold and treasure with drugs, add in modern politics, and TA-DA, failure (or victory from the viewpoint of the Viet Cong)... If the Crusaders had had unified political, theocratic, and plebeian support, I wonder what the Middle East would look like today? If the US and France had had unified political support and the support of the people, I wonder what East Asia, in particular Southeast Asia, would look like today? Your last statement is highly commendable and respectable. Taking in the MA and internalizing both its martial and spiritual aspects is a great thing. Absolutely... The only thing I would add is from Harkon's last statement... Internalizing one's budo for self-improvement and enlightenment is a viable endeavor of the MA.
