Judging by the response to this thread, he seems to have a point.
BobCatholic, I think changing the title of a thread in your post is against forum rules.
As much as we might like to say something, anything at all really, it is really rather a hopeless situation.
We understand how this is the second genocide/ethnic cleansing of Assyrian Christians in less the one hundred years. After the brutality of the Ottoman caliphs were held at bay for a time by the rise of secularism the force of violent Islamism have returned with a vengeance, and their intent will be the total destruction of the 2000 year old tradition of Christianity in Iraq. Just as the area has become Judenfrie, it will now become Christian free. This is one of the fruits of democracy in an area where Islamism is rampant, and the will of the people is indifferent to the genocide.
We understand how Saddam Hussein through the vilest torture methods possible, held the Islamists at bay. But that kind of control has been rejected as it should. As much as raping the wives of Islamists, and snipping off the fingers and limbs of their children, was in controlling the Islamists, this just is no longer happening, and hence the Islamists can do what they will.
We understand, like Bob has mentioned, that this is not the kind of story that the Western media will cover, for it does not fit into the Islamophobia, intolerant, bigoted, xenophobic story line that defines our news. Criticisms that this is what Bushes war has wrought, while technically true, ring rather hollow even to leftists, when it is fully understood that Saddam only controlled these forces with basest tortures. Not even the left has stomach for those kind of excuses, so their choice is to ignore it completely.
We also understand that now, like in their genocides of WWI, Christians in the ME— a mere three percent or less of the countries involved— are not geo-politically significant for any sustained period of time. They are truly the powerless and the dispossessed. Even if the Iraqi government could do anything about this genocide/ethnic cleansing, or even if the Muslims of the ME in any way cared about their dhimmis, any criticism that western governments might make of the ME governments involved would jeopardize the relationship between the West and the East altogether.
Much like Israel would not acknowledge the Turkish Armenian genocide and thereby destroy their friendship with their only Muslim ally in the region, so too now nobody is willing to drive the Iraq government further into the Iran camp by talking about the current Assyrian genocide/ethnic cleansing.
Going to war on their behalf is understood to be out of the question.
A return to repressing Islamists by torturing their families and tribes is out of the question.
Appealing to the humanity of the Islamists murderers themselves is as ludicrous as thinking that they are any more capable of humanity than a Stalin or a Mao or a Hitler.
The are Islamists. This is what they do.
Assuredly, the Assyrian churches have our prayers and our empathy and our concern.
But that is about all we have to offer.
Given the great evil that the Assyrians, most are ashamed to admit that that is all we got, so silence is the only other response that there is.
There are other people who care deeply, too. It’s the Christians in the Middle East who have protected and maintained all the Christian shrines