Pope John Paul II was opposed to the Iraq war. There were over a million Chaldean Catholics in the region, and Saddam needed them to add to his bloc of minorities. One of the Pope’s fears was that if the majority Shiites took over from Saddam’s minority Sunnis, the Chaldean Catholics would be exterminated the way Armenian Christians were slaughtered by Turkish Muslims.
The Pope was not the first to be concerned with Iraq. When the Roman Empire was at its height, it was attacked from the area. Roman armies were sent to the Tigris-Euphrates valleys several times, but couldn’t permanently pacify the region. Many legions were wiped out.
Julius Caesar had a grand plan to clean up the area. He sent a vast army east, with the intent of making Parthia (one of the old names for the region) safe. His plans were to leave Rome on the 20th of March and catch up to the legions already on the march. Five days before he was to leave, he was assassinated on the Ides of March.
Were the seemingly idealistic Brutus and his co-assassins bribed by Parthians? An awareness of how European history has long been influenced by bribes from the Middle East inclines many to wonder if Bush’s most vocal critics are getting money transferred into secret accounts from the same place.
Al Gore, for instance, is one of Mr. Bush’s most strident critics. His father, a senator from Tennessee, worked very closely with Armand Hammer, who is said to have made great personal profits from his support of Lenin, who, according to one observer “had Senator Gore in his pocket”. Interesting link at: http://crm114.com/algore/hammer.html
After considering Mr. Gore’s shameless pandering to those who funded 9/11, one may wish to ask two questions: Would the Saudis have paid Mr. Gore 5, 10, or 15 million into a secret account to publicly appease them? A hundred pounds of gold? Does the apple fall far from the tree?
While no one could compare George Bush with Julius Caesar (the infinitely more brutal Caesar killed or enslaved and sold three million people in what would become France), he certainly has the same keen eye for identifying and trying to neutralize a source of damage.
Iraq and Iran are now more dangerous than in Caesar’s time. They are at the center of a vast, multi-country area whose theocracies have destroyed their own economies and whose peoples’ only hope of gain is to take over larger pieces of the world.
Bush’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are analogous to planting seeds of radioactive material into a tumor. When the sick tumor of tyranny is destroyed, the body has a chance to heal itself.
It only takes a few people committed to freedom to overthrow tyrannies. Mr. Bush has given freedom-lovers a haven from which they can expand their influence to set their peoples free.
May God help them do so.
