Syria's Christians Could Be Casualty Of U.S. Attack on Syria

Via Mike

 

Dated

Syria's ancient Christian population could become a major casualty of an American strike against the Assad regime in retaliation for last week's chemical-weapons attack, should any strike shift momentum in favor of the rebels.

Many Syrian Christians have held deep sympathies for Bashar al-Assad's secular Ba'athist Party since its founding in 1947. Michel Aflaq, one of the Ba'ath Party's co-founders, was a Christian.

The majority of Syria's Christians struggled to remain neutral in Syria's civil war or have backed Bashar al-Assad's regime fearing annihilation should his secular police state be replaced by an Islamist theocracy.

"Enough with the intervention," Patriarch Gregory III, who heads Syria's Damascus-based Melkite Greek-Catholic Church, told the Catholic News Service (CNS). "It is fueling hatred, fueling criminality, fueling inhumanity, fueling fundamentalism, terrorism -- all these things are the fruit of intervention. Enough!"

It would be better to try to help bring about reforms to the Syrian government, he said, "But not in this way, with blood," he continued.

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