Syria’s Christians Risk Eradication

[katsung47]

US created a catastrophe to Christians in Iraq, Now it tries again to do same thing in Syria. All are in the name of “democracy” and “human rights”. It’s disgusting.

Syria’s Christians Risk Eradication

A post-Assad Islamist regime threatens to re-enact the Armenian genocide.

By Philip Jenkins • September 4, 2013

U.S. policy towards Syria is bafflingly inconsistent. If U.S. leaders are so concerned about regimes slaughtering thousands of their own people, did they notice what just happened in Egypt? If they are so exercised over about weapons of mass destruction, are they aware that Israel has two hundred nuclear warheads, with delivery systems? Will American warships in the region be making those other stops on their liberating mission?

Most puzzling of all, though, is why the United States seems so determined to eradicate Christianity in one of its oldest heartlands, at such an agonizingly sensitive historical moment.

Syria has always been a complex place religiously. Although the country has a substantial Sunni Muslim majority, it also has large minority communities—Christians, Alawites, and others—who together make up over a quarter of the population. Those communities have survived very successfully in Syria for centuries, but the present revolution is a threat to their continued existence.

Under its new Sunni rulers, minorities would likely face a fate like that in neighboring Iraq, where the Christian share of population fell from 8 percent in the 1980s to perhaps 1 percent today. In Iraq, though, persecuted believers had a place to which they could escape, namely Syria. Where would Syrian refugees go?

A month ago, that question was moot, as the Assad government was gaining the upper hand over the rebels. At worst, it seemed, the regime could hold on to a rump state in Syria’s west, a refuge for Alawites, Christians, and others. And then came the alleged gas attack, and the overheated U.S. response.

So here is the nightmare. If the U.S., France, and some miscellaneous allies strike at the regime, they could conceivably so weaken it that it would collapse. Out of the ruins would emerge a radically anti-Western regime, which would kill or expel several million Christians and Alawites. This would be a political, religious, and humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled since the Armenian genocide almost exactly a century ago.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/syrias-christians-risk-eradication/

 

[katsung47]

The price of regime change
By David Warren, Ottawa Citizen

There are millions of Christians in Syria, who probably have the Russians and Chinese to thank that they may live there a little longer. The Security Council vetoes, a fortnight ago, on a resolution calling upon Syria's dictator to step down, and supporting an Arab-sponsored plan to "end the violence," put paid to any immediate prospect of western intervention.

The outrage expressed by Hillary Clinton, William Hague, and other western foreign ministers, probably concealed a little relief, for the vetoes provided the excuse they needed to avoid the issue, while continuing to posture about "humanitarianism" and "democracy."
…….
Christians were as common in Syria as in Egypt, before their numbers were immensely swelled by refugees from Iraq - well over a million fleeing up the Euphrates River valley, from anti-Christian persecution by Iraq's Islamists. By now, there could be more than four million Christians within Syria's borders.

When the Assad regime falls, it will be open season on them, on the Alawites, and all the other minorities. Granted, Assad is a monster who has earned an ugly fate. But at what expense should we indulge the fleeting satisfaction of deposing him?

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/price+regime+change/6173293/story.html