Middle East Christians: Washington’s Throwaways

Some things need to be said, and this is one of them:  The passivity with which President Obama and the Congress of the United States continue to ignore the wanton destruction of Christian churches, the killing of Christians, and the forced exile from their countries of origin in the Middle East and parts of Asia is a national disgrace.

The "Arab Spring" is not unfolding as peacefully as is this flower in my garden.

It’s like a malignant virus spreading across the region.  Christians in Iraq, Egypt, and Pakistan have been set upon violently while celebrating their sacred liturgies or as they openly exercised their rights:  They are erratically beaten and gunned down in their own neighborhoods, or blown up in their churches as they quietly and peacefully pray. 

Stories of these religious atrocities keep rolling off the newswires, yet the problem remains effectively unaddressed by Washington elected officials, its power brokers, and the Pentagon. 

 In Iraq, for example, Nouri Kamil Mohammed Hasan al-Maliki, Prime Minister of that nation and a putative American ally, has done little to stop the violence, as hundreds of thousands of Christians have been forced to flee their ancestral homeland dating from the 1^st century, in fear of their lives.

The Assyrian International News Agency  writes, “Christian leaders estimate that the population of Iraqi Christians has halved from around 800,000 in 2003, to under 400,000 today. By all accounts, Christians are leaving the country in droves.”

In 2005, Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, head of the Syriac Catholic church in Mosul, Iraq, was kidnapped and some of his supporters murdered by terrorists. 

The AINA reported that “Casmoussa (who) had a knife held to his throat ‘in the name of God,’ said since 2003, the situation for Christians in Iraq has dramatically deteriorated . . .   Americans came here to bring us democracy. What democracy?” said Casmoussa.

“In 2008, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul was kidnapped and murdered. That same year, an Assyrian orthodox priest was shot dead by unknown gunmen.”

Earlier this year, Shahbaz Batti, the only Christian member of the Cabinet in Pakistan , and “the government’s minister of minority affairs,” was assassinated.

In Egypt, both before and after the downfall of U.S. supported strongman Hosni Mubarak, attacks upon Egyptian Coptic Christians in their houses of worship and on the streets have not abated. 

Recently, President Barack Obama has led the United States into another costly war in Libya to suppress Dictator Muammar Gaddafi and to protect what he says are the “human rights” of Libyans. 

What of the human rights of Middle East Christians – throwaways originally caught up in the bloodshed of the war on terror, and now embroiled in what has been dubbed romantically as “The Arab Spring?”  

The silence emanating from the White house and from the U.S. Congress in the face of this ongoing ethnic cleansing and exodus of Middle East Christians is resounding.