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What a Christian Nation Should Do About Syria

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Syria is a Muslim nation. This means that it cannot be reformed or turned into a democracy. It can only be contained. This sober reality should govern all our interactions with the Muslim world.

To be drawn into another ground war in a Muslim country, no matter how much satisfaction it might give to war hawks, is useless unless the goal is to subdue it, Christianize it, and govern it. Since nobody is talking about doing that, it’s best for us just to stay out of there. Getting involved on the ground will simply result in more carnage among America’s finest young soldiers for no long term benefit.

The purpose of our military cannot be to respond to every atrocity across the globe. Atrocities like the one we witnessed last week in Syria abound everywhere in the world. The purpose of our armed forces is to protect the American people and their security and safety. Syria represents no direct threat to America’s interests, and thus I believe it is a mistake to spill American blood and spend American treasure there.

There is a moral principle involved here also. We as a sovereign nation should respect the sovereignty of other nations. To invade their lands, unless they represent a direct threat to us, is to trespass where we have no moral right to be. At some point, unless we want to colonize the entire world, we must accept the tragic reality that in a fallen world man’s inhumanity to man will continue apace, particularly in Muslim lands and in the godless totalitarian lands of communism.

I believe we were justified in going into Iraq, since every intelligence community in the world, mistaken though they may have been, believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and had pledged to use them against us. At some point, especially when the threat comes from the Muslim world, you have to start believing them when they say they want to kill you.

Likewise, we were justified in going into Afghanistan since the 9/11 attacks on American soil were spawned there. The blood of those 3,000 Americans cried out for vengeance.

So, while I believe we were right to go into Afghanistan and Iraq, I believe we were wrong to stay. After we had neutralized the threat - by dethroning the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq - it was time to come on home, mission accomplished, with only a solemn warning to those nations: don’t make us come back, or next time we may bomb you back to the Stone Age.

President Bush’s decision to try to bring democracy to Iraq was predicated on a fundamental error in judgment, that such a thing is even genuinely possible in a Muslim land.

Islam is not, as President Bush foolishly and disastrously believed, a religion of peace. It is a religion of war, violence, and death and has been for every one of its 1500 years. It is dangerous to believe that Islam is simply a benign religious alternative to Christianity.

There is the further sobering reality that our interventions in the Middle East have made things noticeably worse for our Christian brothers and sisters. Saddam needed Christians because they were the only honest, trustworthy people he could find to help him manage his country. Once we took him out, what little protection the church had under Saddam vanished like smoke, and now the Christian population in Iraq is a fraction of its former size.

Christians in Syria know that Assad is a bad guy, but again, he had provided them with a modicum of protection and stability that no successor will. Christians in Libya knew that Gaddhafi was a bad guy, but he too provided some protection for the Christian community, protection that is completely nonexistent since we took him out.

Bottom line: our military intervention as a Christian nation in Muslim lands has only created chaos and instability, and made things measurably worse for our fellow Christians. And we have, in my judgment, been guilty of moral transgression by inserting ourselves where we have no right to be.

With regard to ISIS, our focus should be quite simple: keeping ISIS out of the U.S. That means implementing President Trump’s travel ban, and extending it to include way more than six nations. It means extreme vetting for every Muslim refugee, none of whom should be allowed into America if there is even the slightest doubt about the risk they may pose. (No one has a right to immigrate to the United States.) It means aggressive monitoring of every Muslim community and every Muslim mosque, as New York did under mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg.

As a Christian nation, our sole role in Syria should be focused on getting every Christian who wants out of Syria to safety in America. Let’s ask the churches of America to each sponsor one Christian refugee family from Syria, and accept the responsibility (no government dollars involved at all) to sponsor them and resettle them in America, and help them to integrate fully into American society.

As far as Muslim refugees are concerned, if Islam is, as all the elites insist, a “religion of peace,” then among the 57 Muslim majority nations in the world there must be a plethora of havens of tranquility for Muslim refugees. Let’s help them find a place in a nation that shares their religious ideology, while we protect the integrity of our own culture and its values.

One of the reasons so few Syrian refugees are Christians (99.5% of them are Muslims) is because the refugee camps are run by brutal Muslim forces who make such camps virtual death camps for followers of the cross.

Let’s use American influence to make the refugee process a safe one for Christians who would like to flee Syria in order to live in a Christian country. Other than that, except to come to the aid of our one true ally in the Middle East, Israel, let’s just stay out of there.

Grandmother a Victim of Modern-day Kristallnacht

The homosexual fascists of the LGBT movement have claimed another scalp in their relentless quest to purge Christians from what the Washington State Supreme Court called “the commercial marketplace.” While the target of the Nazis was the Jews, Christians are the target of the modern day Brownshirts. The only difference is that the weapon of choice for homosexual activists is a gavel rather than a lead pipe.

Baronelle Stutzman is a grandmother with a sweet demeanor who has never been accused by anyone of unkindness or incivility. Yet yesterday the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously labeled her a hate-filled homophobic bigot.

Her crime? Politely declining to use her artistic talent to promote same sex marriage. The two homosexual men who approached her to do a floral arrangement for their “wedding” were valued customers of Ms. Stutzman, even friends, proof that she did not discriminate against them or anyone else. She even recommended nearby florists who would be happy to help them.

But her own conscience, animated by foundational Christian and biblical principle, would not permit her to promote same-sex marriage. As a consequence, the Snidely Whiplash of the Evergreen State, attorney general Bob Ferguson, literally sued her for everything she owns. Although he had to grit his teeth and settle for a fine, Ferguson wanted not just to take the assets of her business but her personal assets as well. It was his goal to strip her, a 70-year-old grandmother, of her business, her possessions, her bank accounts, and her house and leave her homeless and naked on the curb.

Ferguson at one point said Ms. Stutzman’s First Amendment rights have not been violated because she can still believe whatever she wants about homosexual marriage. But Ferguson is wrong. The First Amendment does not just protect the freedom to believe Christian principle, it protects the freedom to act on it.

The specific guarantee is for the “free exercise” of religion, a constitutional right American Christians possess 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including the time they spend running a business. It is an inalienable right they have received from the Creator, which means no earthly authority, including the Washington State Supreme Court, has the constitutional or moral authority to take it away from anyone.

I have been using the term “Gay Gestapo” for years, but lesbian columnist Tammy Bruce recently popularized the term, when talking about the Christian bakers in Oregon who got fined $135,000 and put out of business for making a decision similar to the one Ms. Stutzman made. Ms. Bruce is scandalized by the mean-spiritedness and raw hatred that animates the homosexual movement. There certainly is hate in the debate over homosexual rights, but it is not coming from conservatives. It is coming from the homosexual left.

Ms. Bruce pointed out that the Gay Gestapo is bringing both tyranny and slavery back to America. When you compel someone to violate his conscience, what else is that but tyranny? And when you compel someone to labor against his will, what else is that but slavery? The only one being discriminated against here is Baronelle Stutzman.

Ferguson said the verdict “sends a clear message around the country as well.” It surely does. It sends the message that the LGBT crowd is not about marriage equality but homosexual supremacy. For gay activists, it is homosexuality uber alles.

We as a culture must understand that, to put it colloquially, this is a duel to the death. The conflict between religious liberty and homosexuality is a zero-sum game. In every clash, somebody wins and somebody loses. Every advance of the homosexual agenda comes at the expense of religious liberty. We cannot have both special rights based on homosexual behavior and religious liberty at the same time. One will be forced to give way to the other.

One of the plaintiffs claimed he was happy to be on the “right side of history.” Well, the issue is not being on the right side of history, it’s being on the right side of right. It’s being on the right side of the Constitution, and it’s being on the right side of God’s moral law. The Washington Supreme Court isn’t.

Ms. Stutzman has appealed her case to the Supreme Court. Even if the Court takes the case, the same five unelected lawyers who imposed same-sex marriage on the country are still there, and certainly will be sharpening their gavels to stick it to this grandmother as soon as they get the chance.

President Trump, in the run-up to the election you pledged that you would protect religious liberty, that you would be a champion for Christians whose rights to the free exercise of religion are being trampled on a daily basis in this country. Here is your chance to prove that wasn’t just an empty campaign promise. Direct your attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to draft the mother of all amicus briefs to support Ms. Stutzman in her appearance before the Supreme Court.

And issue your executive order on religious liberty. NOW. Don’t wait another day. It’s masterfully crafted, and will make you and your administration the friend of religious liberty instead of its enemy. If you sign it and issue it, it will instantly become the Magna Carta of religious liberty for this generation.

There is no time to waste. How many more grandmothers will have to face the loss of everything they own before their president comes to their side?