Syrian Christian Leaders Call On U.S. To End Support For Anti-Assad Rebels

The stories told by five top Syrian Christian leaders about the horrors their churches are experiencing at the hands of Islamist extremists are biblical in their brutality.

But they are emerging as part of a concerted push by Syrian Christians to get the U.S. to stop its support for rebel groups fighting Syrian president Bashar al Assad. “The US must change its politics and must choose the way of diplomacy and dialogue, not supporting rebels and calling them freedom fighters,” says Nalbandian.

Given the United States’ increased support for non-terrorist rebel groups in the wake of the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons, the religious leaders’ mission is a long shot. The bishops are asking the United States to exert pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey to stop supporting and sending terrorist fighters to Syria. “The real problem is that the strong military opposition on the ground is a foreign opposition,” Awad explains, arguing that US support of opposition groups means support for foreign terrorist fighters. “They are the ones killing and attacking churches and clergy and nuns and burning houses and eating human livers and hearts and cutting heads,” Awad says.

I’ve said all along give the Christians guns-—as many as we’re giving anyone else. Let them defend themselves. As with the Christians in Egypt, if they’re not willing to defend themselves, maybe they’re not worth saving by jawboning or anything else. Sometimes that cheek-turning just ain’t the way to get along in the world and there needs to be some “smiting” to keep everybody honest. And if outsiders are the ones causing the problem wouldn’t you think they’d be at a disadvantage——simply by not knowing their way around, not knowing where food might be, etc.? Should be an easy job for determined locals to sweep them up. But there’s about 20 million Syrians left to fight out those old grudges so let ‘ém slug it out.

The core-base of the Syrian “opposition” comes from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and it represents a Sunni-Islamist core of the “opposition”.

The Muslim Brotherhood plays the “peaceful” radical Islamists in a geopolitical dodge within and without the Muslim community, presenting themselves as the “good cop” to the “bad cop” terrorists in their direct appeal to Muslims and their public relations appeal to westerners and non-Muslims, while the majority of the external funding for both the “good cops” and the “bad cops” is from Middle East sources with less than six degrees of separation, located in a number of Middle East countries referred to by our own political class as our “friends” in the Middle East.

Those “friends” are Sunni-dominant countries where for the rulers being Sunni-dominant within Islam is important. THRIR agenda in supporting the Sunni-Islamist putsch against Assad has no ambition to create a secular democracy based on true freedom of religion, or any other values that Americans are told will be the agenda of the “Syrian opposition” if they could obtain power.

Assad is a bad guy.

Almost no one who is trying to unseat him, particularly NOT the foreigners backing the “opposition” are “good” guys. I am not speaking of any cannon fodder well-intentioned “moderate” Syrian citizens who have become the useful idiots and fellow travelers of those who are really in charge, on the ground, at the core-leadership of the opposition. Khomeini had such people in his coalition too, knowing he would dispense with their services or them when they were no longer needed or got in the way. The same will be true for many well-meaning Syrian citizens if the “opposition” is ever given power.

If the U.S. wants to work for peace in Syria, it needs to agree to for itself and in pressure to friends END any military aid to the “opposition”, with that opposition agreeing to stop fighting and Assad agreeing to a “return to the barracks” policy if they do. It won’t end the Assad regime, but it will stop the bloodshed - it would be understood that Assad would necessarily respond to continued attacks by “rebels” that did not end their fighting - and it would provide SOME space where a political dialogue could begin.

My own view is that the U.S. and many of its so-called “friends” in the Middle East share as much guilt as anyone over the present situation, having covertly taken the role of “foster parents” of the “opposition movement” (beginning more than a decade ago) in a regime change agenda against Assad, and what did they expect, that he was just going to lie down? They knowingly helped create the situation that WAS going to create the martyrs they now want to blame Assad alone for. Their moral duplicity makes me sick.

Similarly Assad is to blamed, in the west, for all the additional assiatance of Iran and Russia that he called on, as if no one thought he would, or had a right to, call on that assistance when an “opposition movement” that was the foster child of the U.S., the Saudis and others mounted a Sunni-Islamist putsch against him.

Again, he’s a bad guy; that’s true. Unfortunately he is in a part of the world with so few good guys, so few that do not even include many of our so-called friends either.

But what is one to do in this situation? Syria seems like an excuse for general insanity.

The Palestinians (at least Hamas) and the Israeli govt are on the same side, both wanting the removal of Asad’s govt in Syria. Of course, for different reasons. But there they are together - Netenyahu and Mishaal - like a pair of fools.

AIPAC tried to push for the US to bomb Syria, and thus dislodge the current govt. Without any thought, apparently, as to who the US would be aiding in doing that. Obama, whose Muslim Brotherhood agenda has always been there for anyone with eyes to see, is of course trying to lead the US into Syria. But public opinion is so much against the idea.

Netenyahu has stated that he wants regime change in Syria, but he won’t let any member of his cabinet comment on this. Unusually for Israelis, they have all kept their mouths shut. But the Syria policy is very divisive in Israel, and not everyone wants a hot border on the Golan Heights.

I was talking to some people about this recently, and one was from Israel and the other had been back to South Lebanon, and it all sounded grim. The Israeli said the same as you, that Alawites are a distinctive religion. He suggested that the policy might be to give them a mini-state on the coast with Latakia (while the rest of Syria burns?). This would be just about the only way to prevent an Alawite genocide. The bloke from South Lebanon said it is a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the local Arabs as proxies. I said yes - but surely one has a choice, and why join in a campaign that turns you into a blood-thirsty mercenary?

The Syrian “rebels” are the spawn of hell. Their cruelty knows no bounds. They are quite blatantly Al-Qaida. And yet they have the official support of the EU. Madness!

Druze, Alewites both are Muslim with some Christian elements. Druze even more so. You get these hybrids because the Lebanon region was the Christian redoubt in the Middle East. This region can include parts of Iraq and Syria that have many Christians...or did

Secular Sunni regimes like Saddam Hussein can be Christian tolerant same as the Shiite allies

AIPAC and Netanyahu can say what they like but they are not the arms suppliers or a prime actor. Israel did bomb a Syrian nuclear station a few years ago and this was it.

I know your mocking Israel position from a few years back. I think what is coming into your mind now is that when Muslim fight each other for such crazy (to you) reasons then perhaps just perhaps...The Jews of Israel are pretty reasonable in comparison. And just trying to survive in a region full of Muslim lunatics who like to kill each other.

Too bad John Kerry doesn’t think this way. He still thinks peace with Palestinians is the key, at least for him to get place in the History books. Fact is that Palestinians have been on everyone back burner as Muslims have demonstrated how bloody minded they are in the last 4 years with the Arab spring etc.

Iran wants Shiite Islam to rule the Middle East and to convert the Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia to the Shiite strain. This a big factor that motivates them.

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