LEVANT’S LEVIATHAN
NEWS: WORLD NEWS
Biden intervention cripples Catholics
ALEPPO, Syria (ChurchMilitant.com) - As Syrian's war-torn Catholics languish, Joe Biden's hawkish policies are not helping.
A precision U.S. air strike on Sunday hit three locations near the Iraq-Syria border that reportedly were used to store arms and ammunition.
"At President Biden's direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted defensive precision air strikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region," announced Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby on Monday.
Sanctions, Inflation, COVID, Chaos
Franciscan Fr. Ibrahim Alsabagh, meanwhile, cried for help on Thursday, responding to what he sees as a region in distress due to economic sanctions from Western powers like the United States.
Father Alsabagh notes these sanctions keep the region from recovering from the Obama-backed Syrian Civil War and "affect the correct functioning of hospitals and medical equipment, paralyzing" health care.
Prices he asserts, "are constantly rising and the population is starving." He goes on to explain that "half of an employee's monthly salary is not enough to buy pasta and vegetables."
"The reality," he records, "is slowly worsening and becoming more and more oppressive, making living conditions very difficult."
The Franciscan specifically highlighted how increasing rent costs and school closures are especially affecting young Christian families in the area — leaving them struggling to provide for their children.
Back in March, Biden launched his first air strike against Iranian-backed militias in Syria. He reportedly did this to bait Iran into negotiating with him on a nuclear weapons deal — freeing up $8 billion to give to Iran for so-called humanitarian aid.
But this proposed $8 billion check offered no money to suffering Syrian Christians.
Archbishop: Syria a 'Sinking Ship'
In February, Damascus archbishop Samir Nassar, who nearly lost his life in 2018 after artillery detonated near his bed, likened Syria to a sinking ship.
Nassar mourned:
More than 200,000 people have disappeared — among them two bishops and four priests. The situation is such that the people are choked by blockades and sanctions, thus limiting the help they can receive from outside ... [R]ampant inflation and COVID-19 are doing the rest.
Faced with these scenes of desolation, little ones and the poor cry out to the Lord as they try to heal their wounds: "Master, don't you care that we are about to perish?"
A lingering concern, as the death toll mounts, is how long the United States will remain embroiled in the conflict.
Perpetuating War in Syria?
American critics of the war, like American columnist and Catholic Pat Buchanan, accuse the United States of perpetuating the war in Syria. In 2015 he stated, "Obama has begun an escalation into Syria's civil war, and not only against ISIS and the al-Nusra Front, but against Syria's armed forces."
Buchanan refers to Obama's choice to take the side of Muslim revolutionary groups in 2013. It marks the beginning of U.S. intervention in the Syrian Civil War — kicked off without authorization from Congress. The rebel groups Obama supported often fought alongside Muslim jihadis in ISIS.
The Catholic columnist wrote several pieces decrying the actions — devoting an entire column in 2016 to supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assaad:
America's best and wisest course is to stop this slaughter that is killing a thousand Syrians a week, use our forces in concert with any and all allies to annihilate the Nusra Front and ISIS, keep the Kurds and Turks apart, effect a truce if we can, and then get out. It's not our war.
Despite opposition from Americans and Syrians alike, the Biden administration appears committed to its aggression in Iraq and Syria to influence Iran — placing Levantine Christians in danger of becoming or remaining victims of Islamic violence and economic warfare.
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