Russian Motivations in Syria Part 1

I have been accused of hating America and loving Russia. I find this amusing. My normal template on government is that the government is bad, but people are good. So my view is that the Russian and American governments are bad. All governments fight it out over geopolitical issues. Not all governments are 100% evil all of the time. Russia has perfectly reasonable motives for their policy in Syria mixed together with the normal trash; but today I will talk about Russia's religious reason for supporting Syria. 

While I would not describe Russia as a religious country, this has been changing. The city that we visit in Russia, Murom, Russia, is a center for the Orthodox faith. Murom has an old church made of wood, maybe the oldest wood church anywhere. It is a monastery center. Why am I talking about this in reference to Syria? The faith of most Russians is the same faith as most Christians in the Middle East—Orthodox. Russian Orthodox leaders have seen what happens when Islamists gain the upper hand, or even when they are an uncontrolled minority—Christians suffer. 

As a result of this fact the Russian Orthodox leadership supports Assad in Syria. They see him as a necessary evil to protect Christian minorities in Syria. The Christian refugees from Iraq are in Syria as well, and they have nowhere else to go. 

While this aspect has not received wide attention it is a very important reason why Russia continues to support Syria. From the NY Times:

It is clear by now that Russia’s government has dug in against outside intervention in Syria, its longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East. Less well known is the position taken by the Russian Orthodox Church, which fears that Christian minorities, many of them Orthodox, will be swept away by a wave of Islamic fundamentalism unleashed by the Arab Spring.

Patriarch Kirill IIn his warnings, Patriarch Kirill I invokes Bolshevik persecution still fresh in the Russian imagination, writing of “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country.”

This argument for supporting sitting leaders has reached a peak around Syria, whose minority population of Christians, about 10 percent, has been reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition against Mr. Assad, fearing persecution at those same hands if he were to fall. If the church’s advocacy cannot be said to guide Russia’s policy, it is one of the factors that make compromise with the West so elusive, especially at a time of domestic political uncertainty for the Kremlin. 

Russia has very legitimate concerns for their co-religionists. Read the whole article if you want to know more about Russian internal politics. 

But as the article from the NY times I quoted makes clear, this is probably not Russia's primary concern. On Monday I will talk about Russia's geopolitical reasons for supporting Syria. 

2000 Years of Christianity

Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have had almost 2000 years of Christianity. Will this soon end? Probably. 

Iraqi Christians have had a long, and mostly peaceful, history in what is now Iraq. The first Christians in Iraq were converted by the early apostles. Church Tradition says that Thomas and Thaddeus were the founding apostles. It was a fruitful area for Christian missionaries because of the large number of Jews that were there. It is possible that Peter was there as well. It depends on how you interpret what Peter's first epistle means when it says that Peter was in "Babylon."

Here is what Wikipedia says about the recent history of Christian Iraqis. 

Prior to the Gulf War in 1991, Christians numbered one million in Iraq. The Baathist rule under Saddam Hussein kept anti-Christian violence under control but subjected some to "relocation programmes". Under this regime, the predominantly Assyrian Christians were pressured to identify as Arabs. The Christian population fell to an estimated 800,000 during the 2003 Iraq War.

What is happening now?

Half the Christian population has fled, with an estimated 330,000 to Syria and smaller numbers to Jordan. Some fled to Iraqi Kurdistan in northern Iraq.[5][9][10] Christians who are too poor or unwilling to leave their homeland have fled mainly to Arbil, particularly its Christian suburb of Ainkawa. 10,000 Iraqi Christians live in the U.K. led by Archbishop Athanasios Dawood who has called on the government to accept more refugees.

What we are seeing is nothing less than the end of Christianity in the Arab world. This is an unintended side effect of the various wars conducted by the West in the Middle East. 

How is bringing Democracy to the Arab world working out? Not so well. Just look at Egypt. The Moslem Brotherhood is winning election after election. The army does not like this and so we just had a coup in Egypt. The Brotherhood is not happy, they think they won the election. They probably did. 

A spokesman for Ahmed Shafik -- the last prime minister to serve under deposed President Hosni Mubarak -- said Tuesday that Shafik had won, state-run Nile TV reported. At a news conference, Mahmoud Abu Baraka said the campaign was certain it had the correct numbers. Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, claimed victory Monday. vowing to build an inclusive government. "No one's rights will be left out of it, and no one will dominate over the other," he said.

It may not actually matter who is elected: 

Under an interim constitutional declaration released Monday, the military council retains the power to make laws and budget decisions until a new constitution can be written and a new parliament elected. The declaration says Supreme Council members "shall decide all matters related to military affairs, including the appointment of its leaders." The president has the power to declare war, it says, but only "after the approval of the SCAF." That move came days after an Egyptian court dissolved the parliament and the military council announced it had full legislative authority.

The Arab Spring, orchestrated by the West, has brought nothing but chaos in its wake. 

I mentioned templates (the way we look at the world) and the necessity to reexamine them last Monday. What are the templates that we need to reconsider? 

The first template is that democracy is good; dictatorship is bad. Are we sure that is what we think? If you were an Iraqi Christian living in a settlement camp in war-torn Syria, would you long for the days of Saddam? You might. If you were an Egyptian Christian, who are about 10% of the population, and saw what happened to Christians in Iraq, are you sure you would not welcome the military coup that just occurred? You might.

There is another template that needs to be mentioned here as well. That template is that Arabs are Moslems. They usually are, but sometimes this is not true. The percentage varies from country to country: Egypt 10%, Syria 15%, Lebanon 50%, 200,000 Palestinians and many more scattered though the Arab world. 

The template Arab=Moslem is not true. (Note that Moslem=Arab is also an incorrect stereotype. Arabs are about 25% of Moslems worldwide.) 

We will see on Friday why the fact that dictatorships, not having a religious ideology at their base, protect minorities is important to understand how Russia is acting in the Syria crisis.  

The Sun Will Rise Tomorrow

We all tend to look at the world in set and predetermined ways. I have always been one to examine these world views. In the past I have called them templates. Of course this tendency of mine is in itself a template. It is hard to get away from templates. 

We need to be careful we do not allow our templates to interfere and blind us to the facts. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts. I have long had a template that said, like the Weird Al song I put on the blog yesterday, that "Everything You Know Is Wrong." Obviously everything you know is not wrong, the sun will rise tomorrow morning. No. Wait. The sun won't rise—the earth will turn… never mind. 

It is good to look at our assumptions from time to time and see if they match reality. They may not. 

In particular starting Wednesday I will look at the templates we have with regard to the Middle East. These templates are pretty well established: Israel good, Arabs bad; Russia bad, America good; Arab dictators bad, Al Qaida good. Oh, wait, that last one does not work. Yet, this seems to be our foreign policy. America removes Arab dictators and replaces them with the Moslem Brotherhood, and then wonders why the Middle East is in chaos. 

Does our current policy with regard to the Middle East make much sense? Is Mitt Romney's desire to escalate our current war with Iran rational? Make no mistake, we are currently at war with Iran. Hopefully what I will write over the next week or so will cause you to stop using your current template, set it aside for a moment, and look at the Middle East with fresh eyes. 

With God On Our Side

 Is God on our side? 

Here are the lyrics:

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.
Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.
I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust 
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.
In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran

Recently I suggested that Obama had cut a deal with Israel to postpone the attack on Iran until after the election. Click here if interested.  If this is so, why is the following build up taking place? From Wired:

The U.S. Air Force is quietly assembling the world’s most powerful air-to-air fighting team at bases near Iran. Stealthy F-22 Raptors on their first front-line deployment have joined a potent mix of active-duty and Air National Guard F-15 Eagles, including some fitted with the latest advanced radars. The Raptor-Eagle team has been honing special tactics for clearing the air of Iranian fighters in the event of war.

Read the whole article if you have an interest in military tactics. I found it boring. However, it seems obvious that the US Air force is ready to attack with very little extra preparation needed. Everything is in place for an "October Surprise" before the November elections. Will there be one? My guess is that Obama himself does not even know. It will depend on the polls in October, and what effect such an attack might have on the election. He may not attack at all. If he does attack, those who approve might not vote for him anyway. Most people are too smart to be fooled by this tactic again.  Err, umm, Nevermind. 

I have heard it said that Obama will not attack Iran. Could be. It is also suggested that he will not because he is a wimp. Maybe. Personally I think he will attack because he is a wimp, but does not want to be perceived as one. I wish that decisions would be made on some other basis than testosterone. The potential side effects of such an attack in our crumbling economy are dire.