In
the span of 48 hours, we have witnessed the Trump administration plot out a
course that will lead to the eradication of Christians in the Middle
East.
On
Wednesday afternoon, U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley went before the United
Natioins with pictures of children killed in a chemical weapons attack in the
Idlib province of western Syria. Blaming the ruling government, and rehearsing
even shabbier versions of the loose facts and sob stories that led up to the
Iraq War in 2003, Haley laid down the propaganda necessary for
intervention.
Later
that day, appearing alongside the king of Jordan, President Donald Trump — the
man who ran for president saying Syrian intervention would lead to World War
III — told the world he had come to see the value of removing Syrian president
Bashar al-Assad. Said President Trump: "I don't have to have one
specific way, and if the world changes, I go the same way....I will tell you, it’s
already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very
much."
On
Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson informed the world that the United
States would pursue a program for regime change in Syria. And Thursday night,
the United States bombed the al Shayrat airfield, which the American government
is claiming is the source of the chemical weapons attack.
Syrian
officials have denied the government was behind the attack, and experts have
suggested that it was Islamist rebels who undertook the assault. The logic of
American allegations is also highly questionable. In the past year, the Syrian
government had make significant gains against its Islamist foes by using
conventional weapons. Why would Assad blow his good will by attacking a small
target of no military importance?
The
Shayrat airfield had been used by the government to attack Islamist forces
aiming at the overthrow of the Syrian state. Not wasting any time, ISIS took advantage of the U.S.
bombing and attacked a Syrian Arab Army base 20 miles from the airfield early
Friday. Fifteen years after 9/11, the American military is now in a symbiotic
relationship with al Qaeda.
If
military operations continue in the future, Thursday will mark the beginning of
the elimination of a Christian presence in the Middle East. America's
attempt to once again remove a dictator not to its liking will doom some of the
oldest Christian communities on the planet.
For
all the atrocities committed by his government in wartime, and all the
invective hurled against him, Assad has been a friend to Christians. He has protected the civil and
religious rights of Christians against the assault of Islamists. He has attended festivities with Christians at times when even the
Vatican seemed to ignore them. And he has kept a
friendly relationship with patriarchs of Orthodox churches. If Assad is
evil, he may still be the least evil major leader in the region.
In
the short term, every hole the United States punctures in the Syrian military
will be filled by ISIS, and serve as an opportunity for atrocities against
Christians.
In
the medium term, if the United States succeeds in toppling Assad, Syria will
most likely become a failed state. And when this happens, the nation's
centuries-old Christian population will share the fate of their coreligionists to the East. In 2003 there were about1.4 million Christians in Iraq. Thirteen years later there
were about 275,000. Some of them fled, some of them were murdered, some are
being murdered still — now by the Islamic State, which burns, mutilates and
crucifies them. There's no reason to believe the trend — a loss of 85 percent
of their population in 13 years — will not continue in Iraq and extend into
"liberated" Syria.
Even
if by some miracle Syria does not end up a cauldron of anarchic bloodshed,
there is no getting around the fact that Muslim states are ruled by Muslims.
U.S. officials are harping once again on the need to bring democracy to the
Middle East, but majority rule in those nations will put men in power who have
no desire or reason to protect Christian rights. This includes states that are
— at least for the region — generally well functioning. It was only a
U.S.-backed military coup that kept the democratically elected Muslim
Brotherhood out of power in Egypt and mitigated the already severe persecution
of Christians in that nation. And in Turkey, President Tayyip Erdogan, who
survived a coup against him last June, has looked the other way to increasing Christian persecution while his ruling party
consolidates power. The man who denies the 1915 genocide of Armenian Christians
at the hands of the Turks may soon be in a position to deny a genocide of his
own making.
Regardless
of the particular leader or country, the future for Christians in the Middle
East is bleak. Unlike liberal democracy, Islamism has a future as a poltical
force. As perverse as it is, Islam offers to its practitioners an image of God.
The modern West offers nothing but death. The West's adulation of usury,
abortion and Mammon, along with a parade of Western leaders that has formed to praise the illegal and
amoral attack, show that Christians in the Middle East have no friends left in
the First World.
At
the same time, Western democracies are in their death throes, unable to defend
their borders or their populations. The Trump administration, one of the last
defenses against the great Western death wish, is DOA. Trump is too weak to
follow the commonsense platform that got him elected, and Erdogan's program of Muslim demographic replacement is now free to proceed
in the United States as it has in Europe.
Syrian
Christians who flee their ruined homeland may soon be re-acquauinted with
Islamists they thought they left behind, this time in Dearborn, Michigan and
Minneapolis, Minnesota. Where the pagan West has not spread its abhorrent
culture and incoherent politics, it has scorched the earth with its
bombs.
We
are assured by Our Lord that His Church will always be on the earth, that the
gates of Hell will not prevail against Her. But as Fr. John Hardon, S.J. tells
us, we have no assurance that the Church will be in any particular region or
country when He returns. The region whose dirt Christ once walked, spat and
bled on may have no Christian to greet Him on His return.
