Into the Iraqi Night

Good news. Apparently there is no such thing as Muslim terrorism after all, because Al Qaeda have been redefined as "Pre-Islamic Pagans". Lisa Graas, who has been providing extensive coverage of the murder of Christians in Iraq, picked up on this bizarre claim by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. The redefinition of Al Qaeda as "Pre-Islamic Pagans" is surreal to most Westerners, but this kind of constant editing and re-editing of history has become commonplace in the Muslim world. If Muslims can insist that Abraham and King David were Muslims and that Jesus was a Palestinian, it's a hop and a skip to claiming that Bin Laden's followers are somehow pre-Islamic.

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This kind of reasoning isn't completely random. Maliki is a member of the Dawa Party, which is noted for its convoluted path to promoting an Islamic state. Getting a Fatwa against fellow Muslims is tricky. But by defining Al Qaeda as pagans, suddenly there's Koranic permission to kill them. Ironically Sunnis have used this particular dodge against Maliki's own Shiites, arguing that Shiites are not really Muslims. Therefore they can be killed. To most Westerners this looks like a bizarre puppet show, in which everyone is either lying or crazy, or both. And there's some truth to that. The Muslim is not rational or fact based. It's glued together by duct tape and arcane reasoning. If something can be made to work, it works. Facts are not really an issue, because the truth is whatever you need it to be at a given moment. So in Lebanon, Syria is the enemy, except when it's our best friend. And the Saudis are fighting a quiet war against Iran, except where they're working together. And Hamas and Fatah want to destroy each other, except when they're working together. And all of them are also trying to quietly see if they can do something with America and Israel, so long as it's under the table. Understanding the Middle East is not a job for the faint of heart, or the easily confused. Meanwhile in response to the murder of Christians in Iraq, Pat Buchanan has turned in one of the more cynical articles in his career, in which he condemns the murder of Christians in Iraq, yet blames America and Israel for that state of affairs. Buchanan's "Has Our War For Democracy Enabled The Murderers Of Christianity?" exists in the absence of history. In which Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East began when the US invaded Iraq, or perhaps when Israel was created. The truth is that Christians have been persecuted in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world all throughout history.

While Saddam Hussein, a secularist, had protected religious minorities, Muslim vigilantes—Shia, Sunni and Kurd, as well as al-Qaida—have attacked the Christians who have endured kidnappings, pillage, rapes, beheadings and assassinations.

Says Buchanan. The truth however is different than the idyllic secularist Saddam paradise that Pat envisions.

The Rev. Raban Alkash stood in the courtyard of his bare concrete church, looking out on a valley in Iraqi Kurdistan where Christians have lived since the second century. "This is the end of the road,"he said. "The people all want to leave."Caught between warring Muslims - Arabs and rebellious Kurds - the Christians of northern Iraq feel increasingly that getting out is the only solution.

That was 1991.

The 12 million Christians living in Middle Eastern countries must band together in a solidarity movement before "complete genocide occurs," Lebanese and Egyptian Christian leaders said yesterday at the World Maronite Conference being held this week in Montreal. ... Christians who live in Egypt, Sudan, Iraq and Iran have no rights and are used to being persecuted.

This was 1985. And finally as for Saddam's secularist paradise

In the 35 years since Hussein brought the Ba'ath Party into power, he has denied the separate religious identity of Iraqi Christians in an effort to construct a secular Arab nationalist state. He has tried to stamp out their Syriac language by banning it from many of the schools. In an effort to boost his Islamic credibility, Hussein has forced Christians to learn the Koran. And he has often lumped them in the same ethnic category as the Kurds, knowing the groups don't get along because of disputed land holdings in oil-rich northern Iraq.

The truth is that Iraqi Christians have been persecuted for a very long time, under every successive regime. Like most anti-war activists from Sean Penn on down, Buchanan is invested in painting a sunny picture of life under Saddam. But that picture distorts and ignores history. Buchanan claims that Iraqi Christians, "lived peacefully alongside Muslim neighbors for centuries" and that their persecution, "must be marked down as one of the predictable and predicted consequences of America's war in Iraq." But then why were Iraqi Christians also being persecuted throughout the 20th century? According to Buchanan, Christians are being murdered by Muslims because of us.

Why is Christianity being murdered in its cradle by Muslim fanatics? Multiple reasons. A return of Islamic militancy. The rise of ethnic nationalism that conflates tribal and religious identity. Hatred of America for its domination of the region, for our war on terror that they see as a war on Islam and for our support of Israel in its suppression of the Palestinians.

So why were Assyrians and Chaldeans being murdered long before America or Israel were in the picture? For that matter why did so many Chaldeans in exile support the removal of Saddam? Possibly because Saddam's "secularist" paradise was neither all that secular or united, and like the USSR, it was a repressive state that persecuted people who were different.

Are we so wary of offending Muslim sensibilities or inflaming Muslim rage we cannot denounce the pogroms perpetrated against Christians in the name of Allah?

It's a good question, but Buchanan fails his own test, because rather than blaming Muslims for the violence, he blames Christians and Jews instead. He schizophrenically writes an article in which he claims that:

1. Christians are only persecuted by Muslims because we overthrew a secularist dictator that was keeping Muslims from persecuting Christians
2. Muslims traditionally lived in peace with Christians, but turned to violence because they now associate Iraqi Christians with America
3. Iraqi Christians are being murdered because we're too afraid of offending Muslims to intervene on their behalf

All these three things blatantly contradict one another. It's as if this article had been written as a joint effort by Sean Penn, Cindy Sheehan and Pat Robertson. And it makes absolutely no sense. On the one hand Buchanan fiercely condemns Muslim violence against Christians. On the other hand he claims that Muslim violence was never a problem, until we got them angry. Then he claims that everything was fine under Saddam's secularist rule. But if Muslims weren't persecuting Christians, then why was a secular dictatorship even needed to protect Christians? Protect them from what? In the same article Pat Buchanan claims that we provoked Muslims and that we're too afraid to provoke Muslims. Well which is it. Either we need to stand up to Muslims, or we need to back down from them. If we stand up to Muslims, then Buchanan claims that we're provoking violence against Christians. But if we don't stand up to them, then Buchanan charges that we're too afraid of Muslims to stand up to them. This is just silly theater. Pat Buchanan isn't even trying to be consistent anymore. Like so many of his anti-war buddies, he's adopted the "Blame America No Matter What" mentality. And it makes no sense. When it comes to Islam, Pat Buchanan has just completely lost it. In response to Terry Jones' Koran burning, Pat actually wrote an article which suggested that Obama send Federal Marshals to seize and arrest Jones.

And if Petraeus says letting Jones set this bonfire could imperil U.S. troops, Obama should act to stop it. And if he is so paralyzed by uncertainty as to whether he can do anything—and, as a result, soldiers die—what would that tell us about their commander in chief? Would stopping Jones and confiscating the Qurans violate Jones' First Amendment rights? Perhaps. And perhaps not. But if Eric Holder cannot find a charge against Jones, or an inherent power of a war president to prevent actions imminently damaging to the war effort, Obama should find some Justice Department attorneys who can.

This is the same Buchanan who has repeatedly condemned the War on Terror for its effect on civil liberties. Who now suggests that Obama should arrest a private citizen for burning a book. This isn't the argument of a man with consistent ideas, but a fella who can't decide if he's a member of Code Pink or the Crusaders, and shifts unpredictably from one to the other within a few weeks, or even a few paragraphs.