Posted on 10/04/2014 10:43:52 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Last week I got to visit the chic headquarters of Estee Lauder, and savor its privileged view of New Yorks Central Park, where ornate pre-war towers flank the green, rolling hillets of Americas Versailles gardens. But perfume and real estate were starkly beside the point. I was there to meet an eyewitness to ongoing genocide, and his report from the front reminded me once again why pacifism is deadly, and why the Nazis loved gun control.
Some background first. I just published a book about the horrors that engulfed the West in 1914, which tries to explain how it happened that governments worldwide intentionally murdered some 170 million of their own civiliansnot including casualties of war. So tyrants who target religious minorities are near the front of my mind. I am grateful to cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder, who speaks out frequently in defense of Middle Eastern Christians, for hosting an intimate talk on Sept. 18 for reporters with Canon Andrew White, nicknamed the Vicar of Baghdad.
An Oxford-trained scholar, Canon White chose to leave behind leather chairs and weighty tomes for the dust and heat of a church that teeters on the brink of mass martyrdom. In 1998, White went to serve as pastor of St. Georges, a small Anglican parish in Baghdad. He has led in the struggle of Christians to survive the brutish regime of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. invasion, the attacks of Sunni and Shiite militias, and now the brutal assaults of ISIS.
In his plummy English accent, and a voice that kept breaking with emotion, White gave heart-wrenching accounts of hard-working, peaceful Christians under siege. The people of St. Georges church came from families who had lived in Iraq for thousands of yearsbut now are fleeing or already have fled their native land. There are more Iraqi Christians in Michigan now than in Iraq, White admitted, sadly. I used to implore them to stay and keep the church alive. But now with ISIS only 30 kilometers away, I no longer feel right in saying that, White said.
White also runs a school, and medical and dental clinics. His Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East organizes food aid and emergency supplies for Christians and other refugees. It gets some help from friendly local Muslims, one of whom is his brave assistant, Sarah Ahmedan Iraqi Sunni who offers her services as a dentist to the abandoned Christians who stream into her clinic from ISIS-occupied cities such as Mosul.
The assembled reporters, who hailed from CBS, Fox, National Review and other outlets, listened solemnly to Canon White and posed respectful questions. It is rare for most of us to meet someone who serves so close to the front lines of absolute evil, working to preserve the worlds most vulnerable and defenseless.
Perhaps it was tasteless of me, but I wanted to know exactly why they are so defenseless. I have Lebanese friends, so I realize that not everywhere in the Middle East are the Christians helpless scapegoats for Muslim aggression. I raised my hand and asked: There are Shiite militias and Sunni militias and Kurdish militias . Why arent there Christian militias, to defend people like you and your parishioners?
Canon White nodded thoughtfully, I have heard this question before, especially from Americans. Im afraid that the people of my church would be deeply offended to hear you say that. They would answer that as Christians they believe in peace, that all they ask for is to be left to live in peace. They have no wish to fight against anyone.
My stomach dropped. People who can defend themselves and their families from harm, but refuse to fight out of some misguided principle, are almost impossible to help. Pacifism is simply the perverse, flip side of militarism, as Jason Jones and I argue in The Race to Save Our Century:
[T]here is no drive more rootedly human than the will to preserve yourself and to protect your loved onesan instinct pacifism condemns, either openly or secretly. Any position that asks that you passively watch your spouse or children be raped, enslaved, or killed is intrinsically antihuman.
However, none of that applies in the case of Iraqi Christianswho have been outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded since the seventh century Islamic conquest of their country. For most of the subsequent centuries, they were subjugated as dhimmisthird-class citizens who must give way with willing submission to their Muslim rulers and neighbors on pain of death. Given that grueling reality, in a place where one cannot defend himself or his children, wielding the language of pacifism is a smart means of self-defense.
The Christians of Iraq were also wise to ally with whatever government promised them solid protectionas (for all its other horrors) Saddam Husseins regime once did. Likewise, Assads secular dictatorship, which uses brutal means to repress its less-than-tolerant Sunni majority, is the only safe refuge left in the Middle East for hunted Christians outside of overcrowded Lebanon. Canon White warned that the fall of Assad, if it happens, will certainly send Syrias Christians fleeingthose, that is, who escape alive. Long prevented from defending themselves, Middle Eastern Christians have no choice but to rely on the kindness of strangers.
While the genocide aimed at Christians does not approach the scale of what the Nazis aimed at Europes Jews, there are some sobering parallels between each of these assaults upon the innocent. The Jews of Germany were likewise completely helpless, dependent on the mercies of a hostile governmentand the half-hearted, ineffectual protests of foreign powers.
Years before the outbreak of war emboldened the Nazis to begin their extermination program, vicious persecutions of Jewish citizens were taking place in Germany. To prepare the way for assaultssuch as Kristallnachton Jewish property, temples, and persons, the government had embarked on a comprehensive program to disarm Germanys Jews, so that they could not defend themselves from rampaging mobs.
Historian Stephen Halbrook documents in his ground-breaking study of a long-taboo subject, Gun Control in the Third Reich, that as early as 1933, the Nazis began massive searches for and seizures of firearms from Social Democrats and other political opponents, who were invariably described as Communists. Nazi raids on Jewish quarters to search for firearms took place in this period, and Nazi power was consolidated in part by disarming the politically unreliable and enemies of the state.
As the details of the Holocaust became more widely known and discussed in the wake of the Second World War, some Jewish thinkers expressed shame or outrage at the apparent passivity of Jews in the face of extermination. Jewish historians responded by pointing to the centuries of subjugation and persecution by intolerant Gentile societies, which had conditioned Jews to passive or indirect resistance in the face of overwhelming power. Halbrooks research completes that picture of enforced helplessness.
Today, Christians in the Middle East who suffered centuries of subjugation, who are unarmed and hence helpless, face the real threat of extermination. We should thank Ronald Lauder for standing in solidarity with them. I hope that readers are moved to help Canon White in his efforts to save as many innocent people as he can, through his Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East.
Comments?
Comments?
Someone must get these Christians out of Baghdad. This just is not going to end well.
America deserted Iraq. For politics. And our allies, and the world, are watching the result.
“I just published a book about the horrors that engulfed the West in 1914, which tries to explain how it happened that governments worldwide intentionally murdered some 170 million of their own civiliansnot including casualties of war.”
This is either a mis print or the author is a raving loony.
Bump for later. Have errands to run.
International Orthodox Christian Charities; www.iocc.org/
May God bless and protect him on this mission.
Zmirak's not saying 170 million killed in the timespan of WWI. He's talking about 170 million killed SINCE WWI by the various totalitarian regimes ---Nazi Germany, USSR, Red China, Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrinka, the Ottoman genocide of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians, the killing of kuffirs ("unbelievers") by Muslims, etc. --- over and above those who fell in wars per se --- whose ideologies sprang from the aftermath of WWI.
The Black Book of Communism attributes 100,000,000 dead to China/USSR alone. I have no doubt the rest of the world atrocities have bumped this up to 170M easily.
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