Even though military action is “a terrible thing to wish”, he wishes it.
Canon Andrew White writes:
I have just returned from a secret visit to Qaraqosh – once the largest Christian town in Iraq, but no longer.
Today, Qaraqosh stands 90 per cent empty, desecrated by the gunmen of the fanatical Islamic State terror group now in control. The majority of the town’s 50,000 people have fled, fearing that, like other Christians in this region, they will be massacred.
The militants, in a further act of sacrilege, have established their administrative posts in the abandoned churches.
My visit, under the noses of the gunmen, was frightening – but that is nothing to the terror of the poor souls left behind.
Since I went to St George’s Anglican church in Baghdad in 2003 – the only Anglican church in the city – I have seen countless terrible things. Many of my congregation have been killed or mutilated in the years of violence.
But I have never witnessed anything on the scale, or which has affected me quite so dreadfully as on this visit to the north of Iraq
In the nearby city of Irbil, I found many of those Christians who had fled. Some 30,000 refugees are packed into the Kurdish capital, forming a new Christian suburb.
I spoke to one woman who had survived the massacres in Qaraqosh. She had a bandaged left hand. When IS soldiers could not remove her gold wedding ring, they had simply hacked off her finger. She wept as she told me.
The refugees are now penniless, robbed of their homes and possessions. Christian houses were daubed with the letter ‘N’ for Nazere and given to Muslim families.
I met Hana, who used to be the caretaker of my church in Baghdad, and fought to stay dry-eyed as he told me the fate of his youngest son, aged five. The boy was chopped in half in front of Hana’s eyes during an IS attack.
[…..]
Where is their protection? It is a terrible thing to wish, but I now believe that military action of some sort is necessary, if only to reduce the movement of IS tanks, their soldiers, and their power and authority on the ground.
Even this is not the solution in the long run. We need money, and we need prayer. Without those we have nothing.
Those wanting to donate can do so at the website of the Foundation For Relief And Reconciliation In The Middle East: frrme.org
Andrew White was in favour of the US’s removal of Saddam Hussein even after the persecution of Christians had begun. It is to the West’s shame that what was begun in Iraq was not completed and that it has taken the horrors mentioned above to stir us into action again; I fear we will still lack the resolve to see it through to the end.
My family and I survived the horrors of the Second War World. I do not wish any wars anywhere in the world. But, in a short term, I agree with Canon White’s prayer for military action.
Sadly this war has already begun, and it was started by the muslims. Now the decision facing us is simply this:
Sit back and do nothing, or
Do whatever it takes to end a war that someone else started, even if that means sending in our own military and getting our hands bloodied.
In my facebook feed I received shocking images that were posted on the ISIS twitter feed. These were of children beheaded and others crucified with the ISIS banner prominently portrayed. Why the mainstream media is not covering this I have no clue. I, like others, am sad that Robin Williams committed suicide but his death is nowhere near the scale of genocide that is currently taking place.
As long as the United States continues to neuter itself on the world stage, evil will run rampant.