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Ralph Peters: ’2000 Years of Christian Civilization Destroyed on Obama’s Watch’
PJ Media ^ | 9/20/15 | Debra Heine

Posted on 09/21/2015 2:45:14 AM PDT by markomalley

The Islamic State has managed to destroy two thousand years of Christian civilization in the Middle East in just a couple of years, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters noted on The O’Reilly Factor last week. And he placed the blame squarely on President Obama’s cowardly, feckless, incompetent foreign policy.

ISIS has been spreading across the Middle East like a plague of locusts, and as they have spread, they have targeted religious minorities, particularly Christians, for destruction. In Syria, tens of thousands of Assyrian Christians have been attacked and displaced.

They are the forgotten refugees.

A Catholic priest who visited Kurdish Iraq last fall described the wounded souls of the Christians who had taken refuge there. They had been forced from their homes in northern Iraq in the summer of 2014.

“Without question, we are talking about genocide here. Genocide is not only when the people are killed, but also when the soul of a people is destroyed. And that is what is happening in Iraq now,” Fr. Andrzej Halemba, head of Aid to the Church in Need’s Middle East section, said Oct. 28. “It is the most tragic thing that I have ever experienced.”

“I have seen people who have been deeply wounded in their soul. In the various crises in this world I have often seen people who have lost everything. But in Iraq there are Christians who have had to leave everything and take flight three or four times. They can see no light at the end of the tunnel.”

Last spring, hundreds of Assyrian Christians fled to Lebanon after ISIS jihadists stormed their villages in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakeh.

Members of Lebanon’s Assyrian community did their best to welcome the new refugees, but the displacement had left them traumatized.

The group has seized at least 11 of the 33 Assyrian villages in the region, and kidnapped more than 200 members of the ancient Christian sect, which numbered around 30,000 in Syria before the war …

“The villages of Khabur are empty now, there is no one left except some fighters,” lamented Chorbishop Yatron Koliana, as he oversaw the distribution at his diocese.

“Our people have experienced a great tragedy in Syria,” he added with a sigh, saying that many of the new arrivals were traumatized. “They are depressed. Some of them have chronic illnesses. Their lives are difficult.”

“How can we be comfortable, living on aid?” asked 50-year-old Simaan, who fled his village Tal Hormuz.

He railed against what he called international indifference to the plight of Assyrians under attack by ISIS in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

“The whole world, from the UN to the United States and Russia, is responsible,” he said angrily. “They (ISIS) have destroyed our whole civilization…and the world is watching.”

In July, 4,000 more Assyrian Christian families were among the 120,000 people who fled Hasakeh to escape ISIS forces who had entered the city looking to carry out a mass ethno-religious slaughter.

Fleeing Muslim persecution, Christian refugees are often targeted and persecuted anew by fleeing Muslim refugees.

An egregious example from last April: 12 Christian refuges lost their lives during a particularly harrowing trip — not due to their boat capsizing, but through Islamic violence.

The International Business Times reported:

Italian police have arrested 15 Muslim immigrants in Palermo, for allegedly having thrown Christian refugees off the rubber boat that was taking them to Italy after a fight for “religious reasons”, according to media reports.

Those arrested – from Mali, Guinea and Ivory Coast – were part of a group of 100 that were rescued off the Libyan coast by the Italian coastguard.

The archbishop of Canterbury recently warned British Prime Minister David Cameron that his government’s refugee policy was discriminating against Christians because Christians are not among the refugees being helped in UN camps. They’re not in the UN camps because they fear persecution from radicalized Muslim refugees.

The Most Revd Justin Welby reportedly met the prime minister earlier this month with concerns that Christians in Syria will be largely excluded from the 20,000 refugees due to come to the UK over the next five years.

The Government, in line with European Union policy, is committed to taking in refugees from UN camps in Syria and neighbouring countries. It cannot discriminate in favour of any one religious group.

But the Archbishop has raised concerns that Christians have avoided refugee camps because of fears of persecution from rogue Islamist groups operating inside refugee camps.

In a speech in the House of Lords last Monday, Archbishop Welby said that “within the camps there is significant intimidation and radicalisation, and many particularly of the Christian population who have been forced to flee are unable to be in the camps.”

He went on: “ What is the Government’s policy of reaching out to those who are not actually in the camps?”

He then raised the issue with Mr Cameron in a private meeting. A source said: “Justin Welby spoke to David Cameron about this. he raised his concerns.”

The Archbishop’s intervention follows concern raised by his predecessor Lord Carey, who wrote in the Telegraph of his concern over the plight of Christians.

Lord Carey wrote: “The frustration for those of us who have been calling for compassion for Syrian victims for many months is that the Christian community is yet again left at the bottom of the heap.

“Mr Cameron’s policy inadvertently discriminates against the very Christian communities most victimised by the inhuman butchers of the so-called Islamic State.

“Christians are not to be found in the UN camps, because they have been attacked and targeted by Islamists and driven from them. They are seeking refuge in private homes, church buildings and with neighbours and family.”

Refugees who want to come to the United States will also be required to apply through the United Nations.

“A combination of European cowardice and awful American foreign policy has led to a mass Muslim migration that will affect the whole world,” Bill O’Reilly stated on The O’Reilly Factor last week.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret.) disagreed somewhat with that assessment.

“I think you were much, much too soft on President Obama and a bit too hard on the EU,” Peters began. ”If America doesn’t lead, it doesn’t happen.”

Peters went on to issue a scathing indictment of Obama’s numerous foreign policy failures, and put the blame for the refugee crisis squarely on his shoulders.

“Just look at a map of the Middle East … on George W. Bush’s last day in office. There is broad peace across the Middle East and North Africa, Iraq was finally convalescing, and as you pointed out — Obama promptly, to please his America-hating base, abandons Iraq, backs the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, gets rid of Gaddafi without a plan for what goes after, threatens Assad…then does nothing, doesn’t listen to the intelligence community when for years they’re telling him about Islamic State coming — then tries to blame the intelligence community, [and] launches feckless airstrikes. The combination of his fecklessness and cowardice, his rhetorical bravado, and utter incompetence are responsible.”

He added that “the spectacle you’re seeing –those refugees – hundreds of thousands of refugees, those millions in the camps — they’re Obama’s refugees. The hundreds of thousands of dead — in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere — they’re Obama’s dead.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” O’Reilly interjected.

“No! Listen to this. Two thousand years of Christian civilization destroyed on his watch!” Peters exclaimed. ”That’s on Obama. When America doesn’t lead, nothing happens.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: christendom; christianpersecution; churchhistory; obamalegacy
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1 posted on 09/21/2015 2:45:14 AM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley

But Obama is a Christian...because Obama says he is and what more proof do we need than that?


2 posted on 09/21/2015 2:47:10 AM PDT by RC one (....and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,)
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To: RC one

NO, he is a MUSLIM.


3 posted on 09/21/2015 2:48:01 AM PDT by Biggirl ("One Lord, one faith, one baptism" - Ephesians 4:5)
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To: RC one

The devil you say.....


4 posted on 09/21/2015 2:48:25 AM PDT by SaveFerris (Be a blessing to a stranger today for some have entertained angels unaware)
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To: markomalley

“No! Listen to this. Two thousand years of Christian civilization destroyed on his watch!” Peters exclaimed. ”That’s on Obama. When America doesn’t lead, nothing happens.”

The money line statement!


5 posted on 09/21/2015 2:48:55 AM PDT by Biggirl ("One Lord, one faith, one baptism" - Ephesians 4:5)
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To: markomalley

It isn’t that the creep in chief is feckless, cowardice, incompetence.. ‘it’ does it on PURPOSE!!!


6 posted on 09/21/2015 2:55:21 AM PDT by SeaBiscuit (God Bless America (..but I know not why))
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To: musicman

ping-a-roo


7 posted on 09/21/2015 2:55:46 AM PDT by SaveFerris (Be a blessing to a stranger today for some have entertained angels unaware)
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To: markomalley

Bump


8 posted on 09/21/2015 2:55:57 AM PDT by WashingtonSource
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To: markomalley
I'm no fan of Obama, but the basic premise of this article is totally flawed.

It was the two Bush administrations -- not Obama -- that p!ssed away hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives over 15 years for the sole purpose of propping up Islamic royal families in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, while overthrowing one of the few governments in the Middle East (the Ba'athist regime in Iraq) that actually had Christians serving in high-ranking government positions.

If an American government was hell-bent on eradicating Christianity from the Middle East, it couldn't implement a more effective course of action than what was done under those two Bush @ssholes.

9 posted on 09/21/2015 3:04:42 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("It doesn't work for me. I gotta have more cowbell!")
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To: Alberta's Child

Except that it was stable when Bush left office, as Peters points out. It wasn’t Bush’s fault that Obama didn’t negotiate a SOFA. If Bush had had a responsible successor, things could have turned out very differently.


10 posted on 09/21/2015 3:18:02 AM PDT by Yardstick
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To: All
Christians fear persecution from radicalized Muslim refugees. The archbishop of Canterbury warned British PM David Cameron that refugee policies discriminated because Christians are not among the refugees given cover in UN camps.

Christian Syrian Refugees Driven From Safe House In Sweden By Refugee Hordes of Muslims
Christian Post | July 23, 2015 | Vincent Funaro / FR Posted by Titus-Maximus

Syrian Christian refugees already living in Sweden say they were forced out of their asylum house by recent Muslim refugees who demanded they hide their crosses and banned them from using communal areas in the home they shared.

“The Christians dared not stay. The atmosphere became too intimidating. And they got no help,” said a Swedish government migration agency rep responsible for the center they were staying in to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “They chose themselves to organize [a] new address and moved away without our participation because they felt a discomfort.”

The Christians, comprised of two families, were seeking asylum after fleeing from the Islamic State in Syria. And the place they were staying at housed around 80 people with many being Syrian Muslims.

11 posted on 09/21/2015 3:32:56 AM PDT by Liz
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To: Yardstick
Except that it was stable when Bush left office, as Peters points out. It wasn’t Bush’s fault that Obama didn’t negotiate a SOFA. If Bush had had a responsible successor, things could have turned out very differently.

Why would Obama negotiate a SOFA if Bush had already negotiated one that laid out explicit terms for the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from Iraq after Bush left office?

12 posted on 09/21/2015 3:35:13 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("It doesn't work for me. I gotta have more cowbell!")
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To: All

I suggest Obama will his eyeballs to science. The
jaundiced way he looks at the world indicates he suffers
from a rare infection.....maybe a deadly eyeball-eating disease.

13 posted on 09/21/2015 3:40:05 AM PDT by Liz
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To: All
Hillary's hypocrisy is nauseating....lacerating Trump WRT the Muslim questioner. Hillary's lying-in-wait---like a thief---looking for any opportunity to revive her dead candidacy. She'd spit on her grandmother's grave for votes.

In 2008, the Clintons had pics of Obama in Muslim
dress. But Uncle Teddy warned them not to use them

Teddy and Caroline later endorsed Obama to certain victory.

======================================================

Realtime pics---taken in Kenya---not photoshopped.

Kenya-resident, Malik Obama in Muslim dress holds
up photo of his half brother Obama in Muslim dress,
taken during Obama's earlier visit to his Muslim homeland.

14 posted on 09/21/2015 3:45:27 AM PDT by Liz
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To: Alberta's Child

That was a political expedient at the time and was expected to be renegotiared when it expired. Obama could have kept the troops there with an updated SOFA but he didn’t.


15 posted on 09/21/2015 3:45:36 AM PDT by Yardstick
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To: Yardstick
That was a political expedient at the time and was expected to be renegotiared when it expired. Obama could have kept the troops there with an updated SOFA but he didn’t.

1. What exactly was politically expedient for the Bush administration when it signed the SOFA?

2. Do you have any evidence to support your statement that it was "expected to be renegotiated" when it expired? How can the U.S. and Iraq renegotiate a Status of Forces Agreement after it "expires" if the original agreement includes provisions for the removal of all U.S. forces?

16 posted on 09/21/2015 3:52:20 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("It doesn't work for me. I gotta have more cowbell!")
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To: Alberta's Child

Because it made it easier for the Iraqi parliament to approve at the time. Yes, it was kicking the can down the road a bit but sometimes you do that.

Google it and you’ll see multiple sources saying it was expected to be renegotiated. I don’t think this is especially controversial.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380508/no-us-troops-didnt-have-leave-iraq-patrick-brennan

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/may/18/jeb-bush/obama-refused-sign-plan-place-leave-10000-troops-i/


17 posted on 09/21/2015 4:12:06 AM PDT by Yardstick
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To: RC one
But Obama is a Christian...because Obama says he is and what more proof do we need than that?

Why shouldn't we believe Obama. He doesn't lie. /Major S
18 posted on 09/21/2015 4:13:30 AM PDT by Old Yeller (Obama's Iran nuclear deal - The Devil is in the details.)
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To: RC one
.

 photo CAIR-100--Churchill--2014-11-09_zpsc2d4fd07.jpg

 photo Obama-Collage-2--Islam--2014-11-02_zpsbf468b01.jpg

 photo Obama-Collage-1--NY--2014-11-02_zps06473218.jpg

 photo CAIR-100--2014-11-09_zpsbfbea22e.jpg

 photo Islam-Books--Spencer-Guide_zps660c82ed.jpg

 photo Meggido-Mountain--2014_zps37d21275.jpg

.
19 posted on 09/21/2015 4:16:47 AM PDT by Patton@Bastogne
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To: Yardstick

Iraq became FUBAR once the Bush Admin. pushed the convoluted pro-Islamic Constitution there. BTW, “political expediency” without regard to being able to readjust the direction yourself is called incompetence, not strategy.


20 posted on 09/21/2015 4:22:31 AM PDT by rollo tomasi (Working hard to pay for deadbeats and corrupt politicians.)
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