Neocon policy hurts middle east Christians

In 2003 the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor ran the following headlines.  Iraqi Christians flee by the hundreds of thousands with Syria as a haven of choice.  Certain Muslim countries, like Iraq, Syria and Egypt, were once safe havens for Christians because their autocratic leaders suppressed Islamic extremism which they saw as threats to their rule.  When Saddam's dictatorship was replaced in 2004 by an a Shiite led Islamic Republic which drafted a new constitution recognizing Islam as the supreme law of the land and Shiite and Sunni militias began attacking Christians and burning their homes and churches, many Christians fled not to the U.S. or to Israel but to Syria.  Syrian president Assad welcomed them as a protector.  Assad is certainly a brutal dictator.  The book Ghost Plane by Stephen Grey details how the CIA used to send terror suspects to Assad to be questioned in ways that are illegal under even the most lax U.S. standards.  He was not the best guy in the neighborhood, but he was on our side.

Then something happened.  The Obama administration went beyond the Bush administration's policy of regime change against countries that arguably posed some kind of a threat to the U.S. to regime change against countries that just had "bad leaders."  Democrats who had opposed the overthrow of Saddam, a bad leader certainly, were suddenly cheering the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt who was replaced by the Muslim brotherhood and Khadafi in Libya who was replaced by a coalition that included open Al Qaeda fighters.  Now the Obama administration, and his neocon Republican allies, seeks to overthrow one of the last strong defenders of Christians in the region.  One has to wonder why?  And before Republicans point the finger at Obama as the bad guy, what about his Republican neocon allies?  Why would Charles Krauthammer of Fox News openly say that we should support Al Qaeda over Assad in Syria like we supported Hitler over Stalin because Al Qaeda is the lesser of two evils?  Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.  Assad didn't.  Assad tortured Al Qaeda suspects on our behalf.  A bad thing to do?  Maybe.  But certainly not against U.S. interests the way Al Qaeda is.  And why is John McCain so wiling to be friends with the friends of Al Qaeda?  He can debate whether or Syrian men in the picture with him are FSA as he claims rather than Al Qaeda or ISIS which is Al Qaeda rebranded.  But the fact remains that the FSA that he praises so much was responsible for selling a journalist to ISIS to be beheaded.  With Assad protecting Christians and the FSA collaborating with ISIS in the most dreadful ways one has to wonder who's people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham are on.  Why are they siding with Hillary Clinton's foreign policy which has led to a resurgence of Islamic extremism at a time when it seemed to be in retreat?  Without Hillary's war in Libya those 21 Libyan Christians would not have been beheaded.

The good news is that there are strong courageous conservative Americans who are willing to stand up against the insane "regime change at all cost" foreign policy.  In 2013 Rand Paul and Ted Cruz both spoke out against the U.S. being used as "Al Qaeda's airforce" to conduct air strikes against Assad.  Many are seeing beyond the headlines of Benghazi to understand that the whole policy of overthrowing a leader like Khaddafi who had renounced support for terrorism, given up his WMD programs, and had restored relations with the U.S. under the Bush administration and teaming up with Al Qaeda to do so makes no sense.  Some have even had the courage to question earlier interventions.  Conservative talk show host Michael Savage stated that the overthrow of Saddam might have been the worst foreign policy disaster ever.  Indeed when one considers the fact that the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iraq has Christian Tariq Aziz on death row for the crime of suppressing Islamic extremism, one has to wonder what mission was really accomplished in Iraq.  Ted Cruz stated that we actually stayed in Iraq too long, going against the grain of those who say that leaving Iraq at the time that George W. Bush negotiated for us to leave was somehow not staying long enough.

Obama, Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham and John McCain all agree that we must overthrow a former ally and in the process help our worst enemies in order to be more secure.  Most people would call that insanity.  Please contact the offices of Obama, Clinton, Graham and McCain and ask them to stop sacrificing the security of Iraqi and Syrian Christians in the name of some false promise of democracy that they hope will materialize.  There have been enough beheadings already.  Their way has not worked.  It's time to try a different approach.