I am confused. What is wrong with me today that I agree, at least in parts, with the Russian Orthodox Church, the National Review and Henry Kissenger?
The church:
As the West sought to pressure the Kremlin recently to help stop the killing in Syria, diplomats from Damascus were ushered into the heart of one of Russian Orthodoxy’s main shrines.
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In his warnings, Patriarch Kirill I invokes Bolshevik persecution still fresh in the Russian imagination, writing of “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country.”
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The issue of “Christianophobia” shot to the top of the church’s agenda a year ago, with a statement warning that “they are killing our brothers and sisters, driving them from their homes, separating them from their near and dear, stripping them of the right to confess their religious beliefs.”
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The statements on “Christianophobia” amount to a denunciation of Western intervention, especially in Egypt and Iraq, which lost two-thirds of its 1.5 million Christians after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The National Review (via FLC):
Yes, Assad’s minority Alawite Muslim regime is a key ally of Iran’s revolutionary Shiite-supremacist government. That does not alter the stubborn fact that the anti-Assad “opposition groups” are dominated by Sunni supremacists. Stubborn facts cannot be evaded by clever labeling — “opposition groups” in Syria having become the euphemism du jour that “rebels” was in Libya, “peaceful protesters” in Egypt, “uprisings” in Tunisia, and so on. Nor can we confidently assert any longer that what is bad for Iran must be good for us.
That war criminal:
Who replaces the ousted leadership, and what do we know about it? Will the outcome improve the human condition and the security situation? Or do we risk repeating the experience with the Taliban, armed by America to fight the Soviet invader but then turned into a security challenge to us?
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In reacting to one human tragedy, we must be careful not to facilitate another. In the absence of a clearly articulated strategic concept, a world order that erodes borders and merges international and civil wars can never catch its breath. A sense of nuance is needed to give perspective to the proclamation of absolutes.
The Thirty Years’ War decimated the German population by a third through fighting, maiming and hunger. It was a sectarian civil war with lots of self interested outside interference. One of my favorite plays, Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children written in 1939, is set in the Thirty Years' War. The war finally ended with the Westphalian Peace which forbid outside interference in interior sovereign state affairs. As a German aware of my people's history I deeply believe in this system.
Syria is a secular state that threatens no one. A small minority of Syrians wants to change that by force and with the help of some self interested people from other countries. That is a sure recipe for a much bigger war. We should not allow this to happen.