Syrian Christian leader tells West: 'Stop arming terror groups who are massacring our people'

[dude99]

The Patriarch of Antioch, Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, said...If the West wants to do something about the present crisis, the most effective thing would be to support local governments, which need sufficient armies and forces to maintain security and defend respective populations against attacks.

"State institutions need to be strengthened and stabilised. Instead, what we see is their forced dismemberment being fuelled from the outside," he told Vatican Insider.http://www.christiantoday.com/artic...roups.who.are.massacring.our.people/57747.htm
Of course President Assad of Syria regime can be brutal, but Christians were a protected minority there. President Assad of Syria regime of course had problems but it was secular, unlike the most powerful Syrian opposition groups in Syria who have extremist Islamic agendas.

Right now the US and the West is funding and supplying arms that have links to groups with extremist Islamist agendas as they just don't want ISIS defeated but also Assad overthrown and think that peace can happen if Assad is overthrown.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

The West doesn't care. The only friend that Syrian Christians have is Russia. May God grant Vladimir Putin the strength, the courage and the wisdom to bring peace to this troubled area.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Q: Has the regime emphasized Christians’ minority status since before the revolution, or have Christians started feeling this way after the revolution?

A: The relationship between Christians and the regime has been constant. It is a trade that has been planted in the hearts of priests, who trade all their political and economic rights for religious rights and freedom to practice their religion.

They go to churches and celebrate their ceremonies but they can’t ask for anything political or economical. The regime chooses some figures to put in positions of power, like ministers or ambassadors, so that they explain that Christians are integrated and benefit from the regime, but the truth is different.

Q: For priests, we heard that people are receiving messages from priests to stay with the regime?

A: We have a problem, I recognize, that a number of priests are connected and have interests with the regime. We are asking the Christian community still in Syria to withstand this, to preserve their numbers because a group can’t have political weight in an emergency if it has left what it considers a hotel, not a nation to be defended.

'Christians are active participants in the Syrian revolution' - Ayman Abdulnour
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[Oafman]

Right now the US and the West is funding and supplying arms that have links to groups with extremist Islamist agendas as they just don't want ISIS defeated but also Assad overthrown and think that peace can happen if Assad is overthrown.

Do you have evidence to support this?

 

[Armoured]

The West doesn't care. The only friend that Syrian Christians have is Russia. May God grant Vladimir Putin the strength, the courage and the wisdom to bring peace to this troubled area.

...seriously?

 

[Oafman]

...seriously?

Some minority elements of the right appear to have a strong man-crush on Putin. I think it's because he espouses national pride and hates on gays.

 

[Armoured]

Some minority elements of the right appear to have a strong man-crush on Putin. I think it's because he espouses national pride and hates on gays.

In different circumstances, I might find it funny that the same people who use Russia as the go to example for all that is evil also seem to have a crush on Putin.

As it is, though, I find it dangerous and concerning.

 

[dude99]

Do you have evidence to support this?

Here it is and from a major key leader during the Kosovo campaign.
General Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., former Supreme Allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the war against Yugoslavia and presidential candidate, revealed recently on CNN that the Islamic State (ISIS) was “funded by our friends and allies in order to fight Hezbollah.” - See more at: http://americanfreepress.net/?p=23265#sthash.1DXH7bPp.dpuf

 

[Oafman]

Here it is and from a major key leader during the Kosovo campaign.
General Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., former Supreme Allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the war against Yugoslavia and presidential candidate, revealed recently on CNN that the Islamic State (ISIS) was “funded by our friends and allies in order to fight Hezbollah.” - See more at: http://americanfreepress.net/?p=23265#sthash.1DXH7bPp.dpuf

Our 'friends and allies'. He is obviously referring to the Gulf States. It is no revelation that much funding for ISIS came out of the Gulf.

But your claim was that the West and the US are supplying them with arms, not that some of our allies are. It's that claim which I would like to see supported, because I don't believe it's accurate.

 

[nightflight]

ISIS is just JV; I know cuz our president told us so.

 

[cow451]

The West doesn't care. The only friend that Syrian Christians have is Russia. May God grant Vladimir Putin the strength, the courage and the wisdom to bring peace to this troubled area.

God Bless Vladimir Putin. Priceless.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

...seriously?

What other friend do you think Syrian Christians have? Who foreign player besides Russia isn't working to destabilize Syria and throw it into the hands of ISIS?

 

[seashale76]

What other friend do you think Syrian Christians have? Who foreign player besides Russia isn't working to destabilize Syria and throw it into the hands of ISIS?

It's an Orthodox Christian thing, they wouldn't understand. Russia and Syria have had a thing going back a few years now. The relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East is strong (my archdiocese is part of this Patriarchate)- and relations between Putin and the Moscow Patriarchate aren't exactly what we have here in the West regarding no crossing of religion and politics. Putin very much considers himself some kind of champion of persecuted Christians in these areas (not the only reason for Russian involvement by any stretch- but Putin has made no secret of this Christian angle since at least 2012). Now, whether you believe Putin is another thing altogether. However, anything is better than supporting terrorists (like the US tends to do).

Standing in prayer and solidarity with my Syrian brothers and sisters.
http://antiochpatriarchate.org/radio.php

 

[Vylo]

Hmmm, fund the guy who gasses his own people and tortures them, or fund the people who murder their own people and torture them?

Can we just leave? Seriously, either that or start the carpet bombing

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

Syria civil war: Ancient city of Palmyra liberated from Isis by Syrian troops and assisted by Russian airstrikes

I told you so. The Russians have accomplished more in the past six months than the US and its allies have in three years.

 

[rambot]

Some minority elements of the right appear to have a strong man-crush on Putin. I think it's because he espouses national pride and hates on gays.

While trying to get their attention frequently

 

[Armoured]

Syria civil war: Ancient city of Palmyra liberated from Isis by Syrian troops and assisted by Russian airstrikes

I told you so. The Russians have accomplished more in the past six months than the US and its allies have in three years.

Quote for understanding how military conflict works. /s

 

[cow451]

Syria civil war: Ancient city of Palmyra liberated from Isis by Syrian troops and assisted by Russian airstrikes

I told you so. The Russians have accomplished more in the past six months than the US and its allies have in three years.

And they got the heck out, unlike a certain unnamed country that invaded a next door neighbor that rhymes with "crack".

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Syria civil war: Ancient city of Palmyra liberated from Isis by Syrian troops and assisted by Russian airstrikes

I told you so. The Russians have accomplished more in the past six months than the US and its allies have in three years.

"Last May, the Islamic State (Isis) took Palmyra, almost without a fight – as some of the regime's supporters complained – and now a pro-Assad coalition, led on the ground by Shia jihadis controlled by Iran, supported from the air by Russian airstrikes, has conquered the city.

The former development was (rightly) near-universally seen as a negative, but the latter has found itself something of a fan club – despite a ground force of Shia militias consisting of registered terrorist organisations, such as Hezbollah and Iraqi 'Special Groups' that have Western blood on their hands."

"....Of the 470,000 Syrians who have been killed in this terrible war, the overwhelming majority have been killed by Assad and his allies, and that's even truer of the civilian casualties. The United Nations in February concluded that the Assad regime had violated the laws of war in six distinct ways and committed systematized atrocities — crimes against humanity — in seven separate categories, including rape and extermination. There is no cruelty IS has committed, from sexual violence to immolation, that the regime has not at least matched and usually exceeded."

"...Some excitable commentators have declared that the Assad-Iran-Russia conquest of Palmyra puts paid to the notion of strategic collaboration between Assad and IS. As the above shows: this is, at best, ignorance, and at worst propagandising for tyranny. This was the script Assad had in mind all along. Assad beginning to fight the terrorists he facilitated into being, in order to defeat an anti- authoritarian uprising, is hardly any cause for praise. Extending Assad's rule, in time or geography, only guarantees further killing and chaos."

We should not celebrate Bashar al-Assad's victory over Isis in Palmyra

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

We should not celebrate Bashar al-Assad's victory over Isis in Palmyra

At this point, I don't see how you can credibly claim not to be a supporter of ISIS.