That’s my sentence Harry. Neo-con foreign policy differs little from liberal foreign policy. True, the liberals hit on Bush a lot, but Bush’s foreign policy differed little from the his liberal predecessors. That’s why you see little change from Bush to Obama. Also, the notion that every revolution is democratic in spirit (small “d”) is a myth that captivates liberals and neo-cons in particular, as well as its corollary that any support of dictatorships is defacto immoral.

Liberals believe that behind every dictator is a democratic movement waiting to emerge. Conservatives believe that democratic societies are rare, depend on particular religious precepts to emerge, are easily lost when religious sensibilities wane, and that a benign or even heavy-handed dictator is preferable to a totalitarian. The reference to Syria was drawn from a comment I heard William Kristol make on Fox News urging Obama to move into Syria (Kristol the dean of neo-cons, at least in the Washington pundit class). Jenkins thesis is that if Assad falls, the Islamic Caliphate is one step closer to reality. If that happens, the Christians of the mid-east would most likely face the deepest persecution. If Iraq is the model, Jenkins is right. The ancient Christians of Iraq have been largely vanquished from their country. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.

The intellectual antecedents of the dictator-totalitarian argument as well as historical descriptions of the harm that liberal (and neo-con) idealism can generate is outlined here:

Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards.

Philip Jenkins is perhaps the foremost credible authority on the Christianity emerging in the lower hemisphere writing today. He’s worth listening to.

Ah yes, and so here we are back to the debate as to whether democracy promotes anything other than licentiousness, heresy and apostasy. Hard for me to disagree with Scott on this point. I do not believe you’d find many committed Muslims who whould not also agree that democracy is fundamentally destructive to a community’s life of faith.

I did not mean to imply any approval of new gangs that are rising to replace the old ones. In all of these countries, I think our position for the last dacade should have been to support the existing regiemes while urging them — even pressuring them — to find ways to transition to more stable (i.e., less tyrannical) arrangments. But again, short of overt military intervention, I think the U.S. cannot take more than a secondary role in influencing the outcomes in these countries.

I think the point is this: Americans tend to favor the side of the underdog in these proto-revolutions or real revolutions which we are seeing in Egypt, Libya and Syria. We want very much to believe that the forces opposing the “tyrants” are democratic.

This is naive. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is implementing shariah even as we speak. In Libya, the area from which the insurgents arose is also the area that provided the most al-Qaida fighters to Afghanistan. In Syria, the Alawi Shiite al-Asad family rules. It is fairly correct to observe that Bashir al-Asad (as did his father) has imposed a rough sort of tolerance there. It is a tolerance of Christians as well as all manner of Muslims. Likely, the Sunni majority would not continue this imposed tolerance if the country were seized by a “democratic” revolution. The author’s point, although he is a Western liberal, is that we should be careful what we wish for – – we might actually get it and not enjoy the aftermath. In some of these countries, a moderate despot (at least moderate regarding internal religious tolerance) is probably the best case scenario for religious minorities – – especially if 74% of the population wouldn’t mind seeing the other 26% murdered or reduced to dhimmi status.

Syria isn’t exactly ruled by Muslims……. In fact, it’s the only secular Arab state– much of the discontent with the Asad family goes back to Asad pere refusing to make any mention of Islam in the constitution….

I Syrian Christians are a key part of a murderous, torturing regieme, they will eventually reap the consequences when the oppressed masses rise up to overthrow the bloody tyrant — as the masses did in Tunisia, Lybia, and Egypt. The U.S. did not cause such mass uprisings and has limited ability to prevent them. The US cannot be held responsible for the misdeeds of Syrian Sunnis any more than the Koran-burning jerk in Florida is responsible for the ensuing murder of innocent Christian U.N. workers in Afghanistan.

I have to respectfully disagree: I know that when I was in Syria in ’92, I saw more Christianity on display than is tolerated in the States.

Moreover, the United States must not consider itself “the international police force of the world.” If the U.S wants to continue to play that role in international affairs, we might as well dissolve the United Nations and thus save ourselves billions of dollars in supporting its existence.

a very good point Michael. As much as I fear for our Christian brethren, I believe that they have been ill-served by their dhimmi bishops, who long ago made their peace with Islamic overlordship and traded the message of the Gospel for a tenuous security.

If American liberals and neo-cons get their way and America invades Syria, the Syrian Christians will be persecuted and forced out of their ancient homeland.

These secular-nihlists want Chrisitanity and any sense of tradtional community destoryed almost, if not more, than the Islamists. The have a vision of world hegemony that is even more grandiose than the Islamic jihadists and even less moral.

However, the Church in the middle east seems to have traded off authentic Chrisitan life for security as the EP demonstrates. The EP is more visible but the Patriarch of Antioch and of Jerusalem are no less compromised. How long will be be bound to these sinking ships?