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Syrian Americans support Assad & Trump
Of course the Daily Beast tries to paint it badly
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ald-trump.htmlPerched on a hard orange seat high above the dirt floor of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center, waiting for the Harrisburg Trump rally to start, Pastor Joseph Moussa told me Donald Trump gives him hope, in part, because he reminds him of Assad.
Yes, that Assad—Bashar al-Assad—the one whose army is accused of killing upwards of a quarter-million Syrians. In some important ways, Moussa said, Trump and Assad sound similar. And he likes it.
Besides appreciating Trump’s plainspokenness and apparent invulnerability to pressure from lobbyists, Moussa and other Syrian-American Christians living in Pennsylvania like Trump for a unique reason: They think he will do the least to undermine Assad—and, by extension, the most to protect their fellow Christians back in Syria.
“Mr. Trump, he is the only candidate that ever said, ‘I am an evangelical and I am proud of it, and I am gonna protect the Christians,’” he said.
Like any other ethnic group, Pennsylvania’s Syrian-American community isn’t a monolith. And describing it in sweeping terms is as foolish as it is uninformative. But conversations with numerous Syrian-American leaders in the Keystone State indicate that Trump may find many devoted supporters among their numbers. Many of these Christians fervently back Bashar al-Assad, as they feel he treats Syria’s Christians fairly and is their best protection against spreading Islamist extremism in the region. So they like Trump, as they feel he’s their best hope for limiting Western intervention on behalf of the rebels seeking to take down Assad. To an extent, they see Trump and Assad as two of a kind when it comes to protecting the region’s Christians.
Christians in Syria have long called for the U.S. government to oppose anti-Assad efforts. Leading Syrian Christians came to Washington in January 2014 to lobby in Assad’s defense, as Time magazine detailed, arguing that he protected their community from radicalized Islamists. They didn’t quite push for America to aid Assad, but rather argued against any U.S. support for rebels.
At the time, some powerful American Christian leaders backed them up. Tony Perkins, who heads the socially conservative Family Research Council, argued against U.S. military intervention back in September 2013, saying it would endanger Syria’s Christians. The National Journal reported that Rev. Michael Neuroth of the United Church of Christ and Gradye Parsons, then the highest elected officer of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., also shared Perkins’s concerns.
The vast majority of the Syrian civil war’s victims are Muslims, including countless innocent civilians and children. But Christians there also face great peril. Anti-Assad fighters allied with al Qaeda and the Islamic State have bombed churches and driven Christians from their homes. Assad, in contrast, gave Christians privileged treatment and even made one his ambassador to France, as PBS has detailed.
Joseph Moussa, who leads Arab Christian Evangelical churches in York and Harrisburg, told me his first cousin was recently found dead by his relatives in Syria. ISIS fighters had kidnapped him, along with co-workers. They let the Sunni Muslims they kidnapped survive, Moussa said, but they killed the Alawites and Christians—his cousin among them. He told me his family back in Damascus buried his cousin on the same day we talked before the Trump rally.
For Moussa, Trump’s campaign promise to protect Christians sounds very personal. Other candidates talk about their faith, Moussa said. But only Trump promises to actively protect Christians—just like Assad.
Many Christians in Syria fear that the weaker Assad becomes, the worse things will be for them. And many Syrian-Americans in Pennsylvania share that fear. They’ve protested U.S. intervention with signs that read “PEACE LOVE DIGNITY SYRIA.”
Our site once dubbed Allentown “Assadville, USA.” And Assadville loves Trump.
“The majority of them are [pro] Trump,” said Ayoub Jarrouj, a Syrian-American Christian who heads the Allentown-based Syrian Arab American Charity and who backs Hillary Clinton.
To some Syrian evangelicals, even if they’re not actively backing Trump, he’s seen as a better choice than the former secretary of state. Anthony Sabbagh, who pastors the St. George Orthodox Church in Allentown, said he himself supports Bernie Sanders, as do many in his congregation. They see Sanders and Trump as being equally acceptable on foreign policy questions, Sabbagh said. And if it’s Trump vs. Clinton in November, he added, he will definitely vote Trump. That’s because he believes Trump will limit U.S. involvement in Syria.
“I think they do not want Syria to progress—they want to bring it down,” he said of the Obama administration’s view of the nation. “They brought Iraq down. They did in Vietnam. Tell me a country that America went to they didn’t leave it in shambles.”
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Originally Posted by Smitty
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