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.”
The idea that the SOFA was supposed to be renegotiated after it was signed is ludicrous on its face. If the SOFA was drafted a certain way in late 2008 as a matter of "political expediency" for the benefit of the Iraqi government, then what exactly was supposed to happen between 2008 and 2011 that would make it any more politically expedient for the Iraqi government to allow U.S. troops to stay there?
The only political expediency in that agreement was for the Bush administration and for the McCain presidential campaign. The U.S. mission in Iraq was an financial and political disaster for the Bush administration by the time 2008 rolled around, but nobody could publicly admit that without jeopardizing McCain's chances to win the 2008 election. That's why the SOFA was signed in November in 2008 when neither Bush nor McCain would ever have to answer for it.
Those two articles simply state what is generally understood to be true regarding the SOFA. It’s ridiculous on its face that George Bush would have expected his successor to just let the SOFA expire if there were still a need for troops to remain.
For parish newsletter.
“How can we be comfortable, living on aid?” asked 50-year-old Simaan, who fled his village Tal Hormuz.”
It’d be great if more Americans felt this way.
L
It did, and one of you is pretending this never happened with the bamster.
Ignorance. Right here on FR. I dislike W as much as most, but pinning this on him is willful ignorance.
No there were broader geopolitical considerations than Kuwaiti and Saudi royal families. We overthrew Saddam because he was a brutal thug. Granted he was our thug and he did have support Christians under his rule. The problem is that there are no good solutions in the Middle East, either you have authoritarian allies like the Saudis or fundamentalists like Iran. Or alternatively, Assad, Saddam, etc. Or anarchy (ISIS).
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.
What would you have done instead?
Just as an FYI, our support for the House of Saud predates Bush 41 by a few decades. For example, see ELF ONE and the US Military Training Mission to Saudi Arabia (est. 1953)
People voted in Mr. Obama. This is the fault of the people not him. The people threw out 2000 yrs of christianity. The people are getting the legislative, judicial, executive government they deserve. We as a republic had netter look at ourselves.
Why is it that BO being called a muslim is such a bad thing? He was born to a muslim father and he was schooled at least in part, in a madrassa in Indonesia. So according to the muslim faith, he was beyond a doubt a muslim. So why does he keep complimenting the Islamic faith but is unable to say with any type of pride at all that he is a muslim or acknowledge that he WAS a muslim? Is there something wrong with being a muslim? BO sure must think so or he would not try to avoid the facts that are clearly detailed on-line and in his own words about his muslim upbringing.
if he is not presently muslim, obama is apostate and subject to death for apostasy
since he is alive, he is muslim
(Thanks for the ping!!)
My point is that George Bush didn't give a flaming sh!t what his successor did or didn't do. That's why he waited until after the 2008 presidential election before signing the SOFA.
A Status of Forces Agreement is an implicit recognition by one country (the U.S. in this case) that another country (Iraq in this case) is a sovereign nation that is no longer subject to a military occupation. You don't just go back and "renegotiate" an agreement like this.
Secondly, it's important to remember that the Iraqi government was insisting on terms of an extended U.S. military presence that no American in his right mind should even consider ... namely, the elimination of any prosecutorial immunity for U.S. troops under Iraqi law. I remember this well because I had a number of heated conversations right here on FreeRepublic on this specific point. This was a drop-dead issue for the U.S. military, and every lawyer in the Obama administration (and you can be sure that a Democratic administration will have plenty of those) knew it.
It was bad enough that the original SOFA in 2008 explicitly stated that all U.S. military and civilian operations would be conducted "with full respect for the Iraqi Constitution and the laws of Iraq." That's a disgraceful statement to include in an international agreement with a defeated nation who has just approved a new constitution in which Islam is enshrined as the official state religion. Freepers would rightly vomit at the thought of Barack Hussein Obama agreeing to any such terms. Why are we so dismissive and accepting of this when the Bush administration is the culprit?
I would have armed Saddam Hussein back in 1990 and let him invade Kuwait and Iraq.
The U.S. has been supporting fundamentalist Islamic regimes in the Middle East -- including countries where the practice of Christianity is forbidden by law -- for more than 60 years, and this guy Peters is claiming that 2000 years of Christian civilization has been destroyed on Obama's watch?
OK. LMAO.
There you go again. Lying by omission, maybe even lying outright.
I'm not going to do your homework for you, but the idea that the bamster isn't the one who screwed the pooch here is beyond comprehension, the news reports of the day were quite clear. I'm not going to do your homework for you, but neither am I going to let you lie (or more kindly be stupid) and not report correctly what happened.
I suppose you don't remember that the bamster bragged about how well things were going then either?
Maybe you can tell us like Ron Paul did, just how excited everyone was to go to war, right?
Egads, ignorance beyond belief on FR.
Have a nice day.
And please be generous in your support of FreeRepublic!
You just didn't listen because you can't.
And you too have a nice day......
That's cynical as hell but not persuasive. Yes, you certainly can renegotiate a SOFA. In fact there were intense negotiations going on before it expired. Behind closed doors Maliki wanted our troops to stay but things got hung up on the issue of whether they could be tried in Iraqi courts. This could have been resolved if Obama had had the desire to do so. It wasn't necessarily a show stopper. But Obama wanted to pull the troops out to please his base and to satisfy his own ideological predilections so it made a handy excuse for him to let the negotiations fail.
OK. So then why did Bush want to pull the troops out?
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