Syrian war makes sudden appearance at convent in historic Christian town

The Washington Post ^ | 9/10/13 | Liz Sly

[ek_hornbeck]

BEIRUT — High in the mountains above Damascus lies a town so remote that Syria’s war had passed it by, so untouched by time that its inhabitants still speak the language of Jesus.

The violence ravaging the rest of Syria has finally caught up with Maaloula, renowned as the oldest Christian community in the world — and the last in which the same version of Aramaic that prevailed 2,000 years ago is the native tongue.

On Sunday, Syrian rebels, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda, swept through Maaloula for the second time in four days, after an assault a few days earlier in which the last of its few thousand residents fled and the specter of unchecked violence threatened to convulse the iconic town.

[ek_hornbeck]

These rebels are the people that Obama wants to fight for in Syria.

Now, how long until the neocons come running with their usual claim that all accounts of murder and sectarian violence attributed to the rebels are just "Assad's Propaganda" or "Putin's Propaganda"? Assad must be pretty damn powerful if he controls the Washington Post.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Terrorists attack a non-strategic Christian town for the express purpose of murdering Christians and Obama doesn’t utter a word of protest. So what are the deaths of a few hundred Christians in the quest for a worldwide Muslim caliphate?

[ryan71]

I’m sure champagne was popping at the White House and State Department that night.

[Gamecock]

***Syrian rebels, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda***

Putin understands what is going on here.

[oldbrowser]

Now, how long until the neocons come running with their usual claim that all accounts of murder and sectarian violence attributed to the rebels are just "Assad's Propaganda" or "Putin's Propaganda"? Assad must be pretty damn powerful if he controls the Washington Post.

Their favorite is: There is no credible proof that this actually happened.

And of course they are the arbiters of what is credible and what isn't.

[ek_hornbeck]

Obama didn’t seem to mind when Mohammed Morsi’s thugs were brutalizing Coptic Christians in Egypt, so why should he care now? Perhaps if those Christians were black or homosexual Obama might be outraged. Otherwise, they’re out of luck.

[ek_hornbeck]

Their favorite is: There is no credible proof that this actually happened.

The neocons' other main strategy is to say that anyone who opposes intervention on the side of the rebels is just a flunky of Assad.

The funny thing is, nobody here advocates intervention on the side of Assad, nor does anyone deny that Assad has committed atrocities. In contrast, the advocates of intervention either ignore or dismiss any and all reports of atrocities committed by rebels, and actively support sending US troops to fight for them. So who is the "flunky"?

[ek_hornbeck]

[Neocons] are the arbiters of what's credible and what isn't

In what way are stories like this one less "credible" than accounts of Assad using poison gas? Since neither the neocons nor their opponents were eye-witnesses to either, you'd think that they would be equally credible (or incredible).

In fact, "credible" just means "serving the interests of our agitprop."

[oldbrowser]

[Neocons] are the arbiters of what's credible and what isn't

I think you meant Marxists. There is no such thing as a neocon. Neocon means a new conservative which allegedly were the southern democrats which discriminated against the blacks back in the day. I believe there was actually one of those racist democrats that converted to the republican party and he died years ago. The remaining racist democrats were racist democrats all the way to their graves.

[ek_hornbeck]

I think you meant Marxists. There is no such thing as a neocon. Neocon means a new conservative which allegedly were the southern democrats which discriminated against the blacks back in the day. I believe there was actually one of those racist democrats that converted to the republican party and he died years ago. The remaining racist democrats were racist democrats all the way to their graves.

What you're talking about is Dixiecrats, not neocons. Dixiecrats were conservative Democrats who broke with their party when it was hijacked by the radical Left, particularly on racial issues. Strom Thurmond would be a case in point.

Neoconservatives were former leftists (in some cases New Deal liberals, in some cases outright Marxists) who were anti-Soviet, and those who followed in their footsteps. They retain many of their old leftist ideals, from support for the welfare state to Wilsonian foreign policy to liberal immigration law.

[oldbrowser]

I was in error, I appreciate you bringing it to my attention.
There seems to be some confusion about these terms. I looked up the Wikipedia definitions and they indicate that the definition of the terms are in dispute. But I did copy the first paragraph to give an idea of what others are saying.:

Neoconservatism is an intellectual movement born in the 1960s inside the monthly review Commentary. Commentary is the journal of the American Jewish Committee, which replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945.[1][2] On the "theoretical" side of neoconservatism, most influential neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz and his son John, Irving Kristol and his son William, Donald Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, and Abram Schulsky, refer explicitly to the ideas in the philosophy of Leo Strauss.[3] They often describe themselves as "Straussians."