So the group that could pose the greatest danger to America is Khorasan, a terror group whose leader Muhsin Al-Fadhli, used to live in Iran up until 2012, along other members of the Al-Qaeda, before finally relocating to Syria. Intelligence reports say that Al-Fadhli used to raise funds from various GCC donors, especially Kuwaitis, to help support Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria.
The author of this op-ed, Mr. Rich Ghazal, an ordained deacon in the Syriac Orthodox Church, makes some excellent points about the plight of the Middle East’s Christian communities, that is, until he gets to those two paragraphs that capture the real message that he and the IDC conference organizers wanted to deliver to President Obama and the American people at large: preserve the Assad regime.
The first paragraph: Continue reading “The Persecuted!”
Ready, Aim, Fire. Not Fire, Ready, Aim. – NYTimes.com.
The current drive by the Obama administration to unite Sunni and Shia powers in the region against ISIS, the group that everyone supposedly hate in equal terms, will not succeed, because by ignoring the atrocities that Assad and Hezbollah have been perpetrating in Syria before ISIS showed up on the scene, and because both are pillars of the Shia axis in the region, the administration, with its suborn refusal to act against Assad coupled with its current single-minded focus on ISIS, will be perceived as supporting the Shia Axis. The ongoing negotiations with Iran and the reconciliatory tone that many administration officials have assumed in her regard will strengthen that impression.
The Islamic State is evil returned – The Washington Post
Why are so many people waxing philosophical about ISIS and its evil when the Assad regime has been doing worse things for the last four years and when the industrial-scale slaughter reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps is being carried by its security apparatuses, with little philosophization on anyone’s part? No, I am not trying to deny, justify or minimize the atrocities committed by ISIS, I am just wondering why the soul-searching is only happening now and in its regard, not years earlier in connection with the mass atrocities perpetrated by Assad. I am wondering why some people can even stomach advocating cooperation with Assad against ISIS, even though the latter is obviously a symptom of the disease that is Assad. I am wondering about the selective nature of our moral outlook on things. Is morality meant to be so cynically utilitarian, just another means towards achieving a coveted material end regardless of any human cost? Isn’t morality supposed to set up guidelines for our behavior, rather than offering justifications for it? What is wrong with this world? No. Don’t talk to me about God and Satan, Santa Clause or the Evil Wizard. Life is nothing more than fucked up peopled doing fucked up things, as they try haplessly to fill the emptiness they nourish inside, to give meaning to who they are, while fear of the unknown surrounding them and constantly closing in on them gnaw at their minds and souls. We are all so pitiful, so disgustingly pitiful.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 