Western inaction fuels Christian persecution in Syria and the Middle East



Reports from Syria this week reveal a horrifying wave of violence against Christians and Alawites. The terror group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls parts of Syria, has reportedly massacred hundreds of these minority groups. This brutal attack serves as a grim reminder of the ongoing persecution Christians face under Islamist regimes — a crisis that the international community largely ignores.

The Trump administration condemned the killings at a crucial moment. While much of the world focuses on the political complexities of the Middle East, the reality on the ground for Christians is dire. As the Syrian government has collapsed, Assad loyalists — flawed as they may be — have been overwhelmed by jihadists intent on eliminating Christians. The choice for many is bleak: convert, flee, or face death.

We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Christians around the world.

Let’s put the blame where it belongs. The perpetrators of this violence are no friends of freedom or democracy. HTS, originally an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is no better than ISIS. These groups have a proven track record of targeting minorities — Christians, Yazidis, and anyone who doesn't conform to their radical version of Islam. In their world, there’s no room for dissent. Convert or die — it’s as simple and as terrifying as that.

The situation in Syria isn’t just about two warring factions. It’s about innocent people paying the price for geopolitical blunders that have spanned decades. Bashar al-Assad’s regime, itself a brutal dictatorship, had relied on sectarian divisions to maintain power. But when the West, particularly under the Obama administration, empowered elements of the so-called Arab Spring — only to watch them devolve into radical Islamic regimes — we set the stage for more massacres.

History repeats itself

The same pattern played out in Libya: Western intervention, followed by chaos, and the rise of violent extremists. The tragedy in Syria is no different. The same forces that were once seen as “freedom fighters” are now the ones persecuting Christians with impunity.

The past few years have seen a drastic decline in Christian populations across the Middle East. In Iraq, the number of Christians has fallen from 1.5 million to fewer than 200,000 since the rise of ISIS. In Syria, the Christian population has dropped from over a million to fewer than 300,000 — a number likely to decrease further if current trends continue. Meanwhile, Boko Haram has killed more than 12,000 Christians in Nigeria over the past five years.

The West’s inaction in response to this persecution is maddening. Thousands of Christians are being slaughtered, yet Europe and other Western nations seem more concerned with political correctness than with protecting those who are being killed for their faith. Why aren’t these refugees being granted asylum? Why do those fleeing regimes that commit such atrocities receive less attention than others escaping different conflicts?

Why are Christians forgotten?

The conflict in Syria isn’t a matter of simple political alignment. Neither side can claim to be the “good guys.” Bashar al-Assad is a bad actor, but so is the opposition. Both have blood on their hands. Meanwhile, Syrian Christians are caught in the crossfire of a proxy war, abandoned by the international community.

In 2024 alone, nearly 5,000 Christians were killed worldwide for their faith. This isn’t just a tragic statistic — it reflects a long-standing pattern of violence. The slaughter of Christians in Syria is merely the latest chapter in this ongoing tragedy.

Time to step up

The question now is: What are we going to do about it? We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Christians around the world.

The Trump administration has made it clear that these atrocities cannot go unnoticed. It’s time for the rest of the world to step up and take a stand, not just for the people of Syria but for all those facing persecution under the hands of radical Islamist groups.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that when we ignore the suffering of minorities, it only sets the stage for more violence. We must act before it’s too late.

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Liberal media wails after foreigner flights to US arranged under Biden now canceled under Trump



Leftist media outlets are throwing a fit now that the Trump administration has canceled flights of refugees hoping to make their way to the United States.

On the day of President Donald Trump's inauguration, the White House released an executive order which suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program "until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States."

According to the EO, American cities large and small have been overrun by "significant influxes of migrants" that require the redirection of precious resources and that threaten the security and stability of local residents.

"It is the policy of the United States to ensure that public safety and national security are paramount considerations in the administration of the USRAP," the EO continued.

The EO called for involving local and state leaders in decisions about refugee settlements and promised to review possible exceptions to the suspension "on a case-by-case basis." The suspension goes into effect just after midnight on January 27.

'Thousands of refugees who fled war and persecution ... are now stranded at various locations worldwide.'

In addition to suspending USRAP, the Trump administration has also canceled the flights of prospective refugees still waiting to come to the U.S.

"All previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being cancelled, and no new travel bookings will be made. [Resettlement support centers] should not request travel for any additional refugee cases at this time," said a memo from the State Department obtained by CNN.

The canceled flights will affect an estimated 10,000 foreigners, some of "whose medical exams or security checks, for example, are on the cusp of expiring," CNN repined.

Not to be outdone, the Associated Press bewailed that "thousands of refugees who fled war and persecution and had gone through a sometimes yearslong process to start new lives in America are now stranded at various locations worldwide."

While a breakdown of the countries of origin of these prospective refugees is not available, CNN claimed that refugees to America typically come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela, Syria, Burma, and Afghanistan.

Because of the deadly, disastrous withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan under the Biden administration, several media outlets have focused mainly on the canceled traveled plans of approximately 1,660 Afghanis.

"The U.S. decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the U.S. but have not yet been assigned flights from Afghanistan or from neighboring Pakistan," Reuters said in an exclusive report, citing Shawn VanDiver, head of #AfghanEvac, and a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The president will reconsider the suspension on refugee resettlements in the future if doing so 'is in the interests of the United States.'

Reuters then tugged at readers' heartstrings by lamenting the unaccompanied minors, family members of active U.S. military servicemen and women, and the "unknown number of Afghans who fought for the former U.S.-backed Kabul government" who may not be able to move to the U.S. as planned.

However, CNN mentioned that those in possession of a Special Immigrant Visa would likely still be able to travel to the U.S. despite the suspension of refugees. SIVs are available to "persons who worked with the U.S. Armed Forces or under Chief of Mission authority as a translator or interpreter in Iraq or Afghanistan," so those without one presumably do not qualify for an SIV or failed to acquire one in the years since those conflicts began or in the nearly three and a half years since the Afghanistan withdrawal.

CNN also noted that at least some of these refugees have already flown to third-party countries and may not be able to return to their country of origin. "It is not clear what is going to happen to those individuals," one government official told the outlet. "They could be stuck there, we don’t know for how long."

Though the liberal media attempts to spin the story as evidence of Trump's heartlessness, Trump's EO makes plain that his heart remains first and always with the American people. The EO claims the president will reconsider the suspension on refugee resettlements in the future if doing so "is in the interests of the United States."

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How the Biden Admin Allowed Iran To Rake in Illicit Oil Cash Amid Tehran's Terror Spree

Earlier this year, officials from across the Biden-Harris administration reviewed intelligence detailing Iraq's central role in a billion-dollar Iranian oil smuggling scheme. But they largely ignored that intelligence, according to those briefed on the matter, giving Tehran what one former U.S. official described as a "free pass" to evade American sanctions and rake in illicit cash.

The post How the Biden Admin Allowed Iran To Rake in Illicit Oil Cash Amid Tehran's Terror Spree appeared first on .

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Mesopotamia Through the Millennia

In the years on either side of General Petraeus’s surge (2008) I spent many a month living in Baghdad covering culture for the Wall Street Journal’s arts section. That meant abiding not in the secure Green Zone but out among the locals—very rare for outsiders—unarmed, unembedded, and frequently exposed to the city’s turbulence in search of stories: the last art gallery in Baghdad, the Iraq Symphony Orchestra, the embattled Ballet School, historical sites, and much else. Amid the booms and zings and present dangers, one got a seeping sense of a primevally fertile landscape haunted by ancient time. History had first emerged here (as opposed to prehistory); golden ages had come and gone, each time affecting the known world, acting as its pivot.

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FACT CHECK: Video Shows 2003 Baghdad Bombing, Not Israeli Attack
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FACT CHECK: Video Shows 2003 Baghdad Bombing, Not Israeli Attack

The video is from the U.S. bombing of Baghdad, Iraq in 2003

Hundreds of former Deep State officials and nominal Republicans endorse Harris



Kamala Harris continues to collect endorsements from establishmentarians with links to the military-industrial complex and security state.

On Sunday, several hundred former officials who served in the George W. Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations joined a handful of nominal Republicans in signing a letter of support for Harris.

Their letter, advanced by the advocacy group National Security Leaders for America, contains the kind of rhetoric that set the stage for two attempts on President Donald Trump's life and appears to have left nearly 3 in 10 Democrats polled wishing Trump had been killed.

It states, "This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism."

The letter, signed by some architects of disastrous foreign entanglements, including what was for private contractors an extremely lucrative war in Iraq, stated, "We are trained to make sober, rational decisions. That is how we know Vice President Harris would make an excellent Commander-in-Chief, while Mr. Trump has proven he is not up to the job."

The letter further alleges that Harris "has proven she is an effective leader able to advance American national security interests" and that she is "prepared and strategic."

'You need a president that's not going to be taking you into war.'

The signatories were evidently content to overlook Harris' hand in the current Democratic administration's deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, her ostensible abandonment of Americans in Haiti during its latest collapse, her failure as border czar to stem the flood of tens of millions of illegal aliens into the country, and the glaring fact that Russia invaded Ukraine during the Biden-Harris and Obama administrations, not Trump's.

It's clear that the former security and military officials figure Trump — the first president since Richard Nixon not to kick off a new war or military conflict while in office — will make good on his promise of peace and relative non-interventionism.

After all, their letter bemoans the Republican's decision to withdraw from what he called another "endless war" in Syria, his criticism of allies — a likely allusion to Trump's pointed demands that NATO members meet their spending obligations — and his supposed ceding of "influence in the Middle East to Russia, Iran, and China."

During a town hall interview earlier this month with Sean Hannity in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Trump said, "You need a president that's not going to be taking you into war. We won't have World War III when I'm elected, but with these clowns that you have in there now, you're going to end up having World War III."

'They get rich when America's sons and daughters go off to die.'

Among the signatories of the letter are several partisan ambassadors as well as

  • John Kerry, Biden's former special presidential envoy for climate;
  • former Biden domestic policy adviser and Obama national security adviser Susan Rice;
  • Clinton adviser Nancy Soderberg;
  • Obama speechwriter and national security adviser Ben Rhodes;
  • Obama adviser Caroline Atkinson;
  • Clinton national security adviser Anthony Lake;
  • Janet Ann Napolitano, the Obama Homeland Security secretary who concern-mongered about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans returning from war as right-wing extremists; and
  • Rt. Brigadier Gen. John Wade Douglass, a failed Democratic congressional candidate and former CEO of the Douglass Aerospace Group.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Axios in a statement that the letter's signatories "are the same people who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited off of them while the American people suffered."

This latest endorsement by establishmentarians comes just weeks after former Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney endorsed Harris "because of the danger that Donald Trump poses."

Cheney, who was overwhelmingly rejected by Republican voters in Wyoming in 2022, previously called Harris "a radical liberal who wants to raise your taxes, take away your guns and your health insurance, explode the size of our federal government and give it control over every aspect of our lives."

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said of Cheney's endorsement, "Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney make very, very interesting partners. They get rich when America's sons and daughters go off to die. They get rich when America loses wars instead of winning wars. And they get rich when America gets weaker in the world."

In August, scores of Republican staffers who served under President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), and failed presidential candidate Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) threw their support behind Harris, claiming another four years of Trump would alternatively "hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions."

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Biden-Harris State Dept Set To Host Iraqi Official Allegedly Helping Iran Evade Oil Sanctions

The Biden-Harris State Department is slated to host a senior Iraqi official allegedly involved in "industrial-scale sanctions evasion on behalf of the regime in Iran," prompting Congress to demand the administration revoke his American visa.

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The Ignominy Of Master Sergeant Timothy Walz

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