Persecution of Iraqi Christians

Today's issue of National Review Online includes an eye-opening article on persecution of the Christian minority in Iraq, cowritten by Nina Shea, director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. The insurgents have chosen the ChaldoAssyrians as a special target, attacking them "with particular ferocity" because they associate these natives of Iraq with the West. That is to say, the insurgents hate them intensely because the ChaldoAssyrians are Christians.

Subjected to bombings, kidnappings, murders, and other such violence by the insurgents, tens of thousands of the nearly one million Iraqi ChaldoAssyrians have fled into exile in the past few months, and unless the United States does something to ensure that they are protected under the new government, they may all leave before it takes over. It is ironic that they were safer under Saddam Hussein than they are today. The U.S. government should be ashamed, morally, if they allow these people to be forced from the country, and it is utterly stupid and insane for us to let potential future allies be thus pushed out.

Among the dozens of stories the New York Times has written about the War in Iraq, this one seems to have slipped through the cracks. It is a big story that has received little to no attention from the major American news media. They, too, should be ashamed.