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Did Bush-Obama Policies Begin the End of Christianity in Arab Lands?
Townhall.com ^ | August 21, 2013 | Terry Jeffrey

Posted on 08/21/2013 6:21:57 AM PDT by Kaslin

When the despotic King Herod plotted to kill Jesus by sending his agents to slaughter every boy under the age of 2 in and around Bethlehem, an angel appeared to Joseph and told him, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and escape to Egypt."

That, says the Gospel of Matthew, fulfilled what God said through the prophet Hosea: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

Now, two millennia later, we may live in a time when Christians must flee for their lives out of Egypt -- not into it. They do not fear being slaughtered by King Herod, but by the Muslim Brotherhood.

When St. Paul was still persecuting Christians, Jesus struck him down with a bolt of light as he was on the road to Damascus. Paul regained his sight in that city and began his mission of spreading Christianity throughout the world.

Today, Christians fear being struck down on the roads of Syria not by bolts of light, but by Islamist revolutionaries allied with al-Qaida.

In Egypt last week, reports The Associated Press, Islamists attacked 63 Christian churches. In Syria, rebels shot 11 people on the road between two Christian villages.

In our time, Christianity could be driven from some of the lands where it first took root.

If that dark and epochal moment comes, some of the blame for it must be pinned on the messianic foreign policies pursued by our most recent two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

After al-Qaida attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, this nation had a just cause in punishing the perpetrators of those attacks and making sure they could make no further assaults on our homeland. That, of course, required military action in those places where al-Qaida took sanctuary -- particularly Afghanistan.

But George W. Bush had a grander -- and ill-advised -- vision. He thought it was his mission to make it America's mission to literally end tyranny in the world and implant "democracy" everywhere.

He expressed his evangelical zeal for this secular cause in his second inaugural address. "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," said Bush.

Obama did not reverse Bush's policy, but added another ill-advised element to it. In promoting democracy in the Middle East, he portrayed the Muslim majorities there as victims of Western colonialism and Cold War policies.

"The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars," Obama said in a June 2009 speech in Cairo. "More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies, without regard to their own aspirations."

What has happened in the Middle East during the presidencies of Bush and Obama? Bush went to war in Iraq and then tried to install a representative government there through years of occupation. Obama supported rebellions in Egypt, Libya and Syria.

In Libya, some of the Islamists Obama helped liberate from Moammar Gadhafi turned around and attacked a State Department mission and a CIA compound, murdering four of our people. In Iraq, Syria and Egypt, Christians now face potentially existential struggles.

According to the 2013 report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, "The government of Iraq continues to tolerate systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations, including violent, religiously motivated attacks."

Christians and other religious minorities, says the commission, "have fled the country in recent years, threatening these communities' continued existence in Iraq."

The State Department's 2012 report on religious freedom said that "due to emigration as Christian flee the country," Syria's Christians may have dropped from 10 percent of that nation's population to about 8 percent.

The Central Intelligence Agency estimates 10 percent of Egyptians are Christians. But with their systematic attacks on Christian churches, Egyptian Islamists are now sending a message to Christians who still live in that land where Jesus once lived: Get out.

The Bush-Obama policies were rooted in two great errors. Their job was not to change other nations, but to protect the liberty, security and prosperity of this nation. And the greatness of this nation has ultimately been rooted not merely in the admittedly felicitous form of our government, but in the popular embrace of moral truths -- expressly taught by millennia of Judeo-Christian tradition -- that make all freedom possible.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: christianity; christianpersecution; egypt; foreignaffairs; georgewbush; islam; middleeast; obama
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To: Kaslin

The United States has been crapping on Christians abroad since Woodrow Wilson. Since McKinley if you consider the idiotic excuse he gave for grabbing the Philippines.


21 posted on 08/21/2013 7:28:24 AM PDT by Romulus
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To: Claud
Our apostasy is getting Christians around the world killed because we are too wishy washy to stand up for them.

I do not want to get into your theological issues. But the foreign policy causation is worse than you suggest! In several very striking instances, we directly helped to enable, even fund, the persecution of Christians, during the Dean Rusk era, and in other instances, since. (See American Foreign Policy.) There can be no moral justification for some of these misdeeds; and they were never in real American interests..

And see, my reply #18, above.

William Flax

22 posted on 08/21/2013 7:32:56 AM PDT by Ohioan
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To: livius

The big problem is that the US has rejected Christianity. The plight of the ME Christians is just a ripple effect.


23 posted on 08/21/2013 8:03:59 AM PDT by freedomfiter2 (Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.)
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To: Southside_Chicago_Republican

Later.


24 posted on 08/21/2013 8:10:27 AM PDT by Southside_Chicago_Republican (If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.)
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To: Kaslin

NO! The beginning of the end for Christianity in the Middle East was when Mohammed moved his rag tag band of followers to Medina.

His peaceful “preaching” in Mecca (12 years worth) was not working, so in Medina he increasingly resorted to force of arms, and Islam began to rapidly spread throughout the Middle East.

It all began in 622 AD, folks.


25 posted on 08/21/2013 8:17:22 AM PDT by Taxman (So that the beautiful pressure does not diminish!)
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To: Sioux-san

“Judge not lest ye be judged.”


26 posted on 08/21/2013 8:25:17 AM PDT by ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton (Go Egypt on 0bama)
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To: Sioux-san

Did you happen to notice Bush is included in the indicting headline?

You really believe Bush wanted to end Christianity in the region?

The article is misguided.

Obama’s motivation is to break U.S. ties to mid-east oil and politics.
He just does’t give a damn about the impact on Christians, as he sees them as an extention of “excess western influence in the world”.


27 posted on 08/21/2013 8:31:30 AM PDT by G Larry (Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Psalms 109:8)
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To: Ohioan

I don’t doubt it.

I’m willing to open up the issue all the way back to 1918. Was there a good reason why, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Christian nations didn’t all agree to hand Hagia Sophia back to the Patriarch of Constantinople on a platter?


28 posted on 08/21/2013 1:42:08 PM PDT by Claud
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To: Claud
I think that you are overlooking the fact that by 1918 Turkish Thrace was mostly Moslem, Attaturk actually defeated Greece in a war that followed a couple of years later.

I was referring to such incidents as the suppression of the Ibo (Christian Tribe in Biafra), & the people in Katanga, where we actually provided the UN forces with the air power to bomb Christian hospitals, etc..

29 posted on 08/21/2013 2:20:23 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: G Larry

Do I believe that Bush wanted to end Christianity in the Region? That wasn’t the premise posed. Did his administration’s policies lead to the dangerous destabilization of the Middle East that we are experiencing now on steroids under Soeotoro? Did Bush’s quest for “democracy” and free elections resulted in the Islamists running roughshod over everyone, including moderate muslims - the proof is in that pudding, don’t you think? Christians are being driven/burned out of their homes & churches as near as I can tell. This all goes so far beyond Bush or Obama - they are mere puppets playing in this insanity. Bush never wanted “nation building” but his position was overridden. So who is calling these crazy shots?


30 posted on 08/21/2013 10:23:17 PM PDT by Sioux-san (riv)
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To: Kaslin

“He expressed his evangelical zeal for this secular cause in his second inaugural address. “So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world,” said Bush”

That was one of the most sterling examples of utopian idiocy ever uttered by man. Right up there with “Islam is a Religion of Peace”


31 posted on 08/21/2013 11:48:03 PM PDT by Pelham (Deportation is the law. When it's not enforced you get California)
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To: Sioux-san

“Did his administration’s policies lead to the dangerous destabilization of the Middle East that we are experiencing now on steroids..?”

No, Bush policies did NOT destabilize Egypt or Syria or Libya.
As for Iraq, it was Obama’s exit approach that resulted in the instability there.

I’ve got my tin foil ready.....Who is calling these crazy shots?


32 posted on 08/22/2013 5:25:27 AM PDT by G Larry (Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Psalms 109:8)
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To: G Larry

Bush took us into Iraq and Afghanistan, and he didn’t fight either war to WIN, which means crushing the enemy so badly, including the civilians, that they know better than to mess with you for a very long time. In my book this means there never was any intention of winning in the first place, just dehumanizing our troops by evil ROE that don’t allow victory through intractable conflicts with no real end in sight.

There is no way to leave either country now and expect that all our “good deeds” will be maintained in kumbaya fashion by the Natives. Ask the Russians how well that worked out for them, and they were way less kind than American troops are.

If Bush could have had a 3rd term, I believe we would be in the same place we are with Soeotoro, who also doesn’t believe in fighting to win - Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria all down the hatch...Jordan soon to follow. Our Govt. is aiding and abetting the CHAOS. Why?

What our Govt. didn’t count on was the rise of the people in Egypt to expose our collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood/Saudi kings to the detriment of our own country. The Bushes, Clintons, Soeotoro are all tools and I am suprised that you can’t see that. Tools of whom? You don’t need a tinfoil hat to answer that one. Follow the money and look for those with power & cash and no allegiance to any Nation State (crony corporatists, international banksters, and treasonous politicians who have sold us out in spades).


33 posted on 08/22/2013 9:18:02 AM PDT by Sioux-san (riv)
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