Christians Essential To Syria

Our presence is the essential condition for a moderate Islam, which exists thanks to the Christians. If we leave, there can be no democracy in Syria. This is supported also by the Muslims themselves, who fear the Islamist's madness. Many say that they cannot live where there are no Christians.

           Gregory III Laham, Patriarch of Antioch of the East, 
           of Alexandria and Jerusalem of the Melkites

The United States and its allies are currently looking at the use of chemical weapons in Syria. This will be used as a pretext for some sort of military intervention in the Syrian civil war. Some time ago President Obama announced to the world that the use of chemical weapons was a red line that would trigger some sort of response from the US. Essentially he was serving notice to the combatants in the conflict that all they had to do to get outsiders involved was to drop a few chemical weapons. President Obama has held himself and his nation hostage to the warring factions in Syria.

Where do Christians stand in all of this? The Iraq war resulted in the decimation of the Christians in Iraq. Iraq and Syria were two countries that had provided some refuge for the Christian population in the middle east. In both cases the Christian minority provided a counterbalance for hostile Muslim factions. It was not an easy position to be in but it worked. Now Iraq is gone and Syria is next. The Christians in Syria are already caught between a rock and a hard place. They do not want to join the rebels and they do not wish to be seen as supporting the government so they are targets for both sides.

President Obama has drawn his red line on a completely false set of grounds. The targeting of civilians in a war is wrong whether you shoot them, blow them up, or spray them with chemicals. Lets face it... people have been dying in this war for two years now, many of them innocent civilians. The Christian communities in Syria have their backs to the wall. Now we are expected to believe that the sensitive conscience of Barack Obama has been pricked by the use of chemical weapons? Now we are expected to get excited when someone picks up an empty canister and shouts "Look! We've found weapons of mass destruction!"

The United States did not participate in the Hague Convention regarding chemical weapons and only became a participator in the Geneva Protocol in 1975. It still reserves the right to the use of chemical weapons against an enemy state which does not observe the prohibitions of the protocol. The US has used herbicides including agent orange during the Vietnam war which have had a lasting and devastating effect on those exposed. The US has been a persistent non-signatory to the Anti-Personnel Landmine Convention. The US has used weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In light of all this, President Obama's protestations that Syrian chemical weapons are a threat to the United States sounds a little hollow.