One little-publicized effect of the Iraq adventure has been to make life much, much more dangerous for Christians in the Middle East. The recent murder of Christian bookstore workers in Turkey is one example. But closer to Ground Zero, the situation is far worse.
Since the 2003 invasion, 25 Iraqi churches have been bombed; nuns have been murdered; Christian women who wouldn't adopt the veil have been disfigured with acid -- and, as Paul Isaac observes in the International Herald Tribune -- there has been a massive exodus of Christians from Iraq. Approximately one third of the 1.6 Iraqi million refugees (and another third of the 1.8 million "internally displaced persons") are Christians whose lives have been threatened by the rise of Islamist militias.
Typical recent case: one of the militias has delcared a fatwa against the Assyrian Christians in a baghdad suburb, giving them 24 hours to convert or die. Needless to say, a lot of people did the sensible thing, by packing their bags and running.
There are two possiblities here. Either the President and his advisors simply didn't think through the details of this war, running in with neither a viable long-term plan nor any understanding of the society they would disrupt -- or else they did know what they were doing, and started the war anyway. Because George Bush hates Christianity, and is seeking to destroy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment