Home Uncategorised Senator McCain Defends Syrian Rebels in Unprecedented Temper Tantrum

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Senator McCain Defends Syrian Rebels in Unprecedented Temper Tantrum

16 February 2014

angry McCain — Faced with a delegation of Syrian clergy complaining about the extermination of Christians in their homeland, Senator McCain yelled and threw a temper tantrum.

American Senator John McCain greeted a delegation of Syrian clergy with a temper tantrum that has been described as “unbelievable” by a key witness.

The delegation of Syrian clergy visited the capital to report on the systematic extermination and kidnapping of Syria’s Christian population at the hands of the very rebels McCain wishes to arm. Instead of greeting the dignitaries with respect, Senator McCain burst into the Senate Arms Services Committee meeting room yelling, then quickly stormed back out.

The high-level source who reported the bizarre temper tantrum told Judicial Watch that “He was incredibly rude, because he didn’t think the Syrian church leaders should even be allowed in the room.”

The source, who described the explosion as “unbelievable”, reported that after McCain had calmed down he “reentered the room and sat briefly but refused to make eye contact with the participants, instead ignoring them by looking down at what appeared to be random papers.”

Senator Graham apologized to the church representatives for McCain’s frenzied outburst, the source reported.
Having been persuaded by 26-year-old Elizabeth O’Bagy to arm the Syrian rebels, McCain has shown a low tolerance to all data suggesting the rebels are anything other than well-meaning moderates. The Syrian church leaders presented data that disrupts McCain’s simplistic view assessment of the situation, but instead of reconsidering his position, McCain merely reacted in childish anger.

Even the mainstream media has been unable to deny that the conflict in Syria is far from the black-and-white struggle against injustice that McCain has tried to represent it as being.The New York Times reported last year that

The religious agenda of the combatants sets them apart from many civilian activists, protesters and aid workers who had hoped the uprising would create a civil, democratic Syria.

When the armed rebellion began, defectors from the government’s staunchly secular army formed the vanguard. The rebel movement has since grown to include fighters with a wide range of views, including Qaeda-aligned jihadis seeking to establish an Islamic emirate, political Islamists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and others who want an Islamic-influenced legal code like that found in many Arab

Their public statement presented by the clergy was as follows:

We are a group of Christian leaders who came from Syria to Washington this week in order to tell the story of the suffering of Syria’s people. Newspapers and televisions have shown the images of bombings and destruction, but these cannot convey the depth of individual suffering. We came to tell the story of a young Catholic man named Fadi from the Valley of Christians (Wadi al Nasara). On his way home from work one day he was forced out of his car by an armed group and shot. They cut off his head and took it with them, leaving the body. His family had to bury the decapitated body. And we wanted the West to know what happened on November 11th, when rebels fired mortar rockets at the Armenian Christian Tarkmanchats High School in Damascus just as the children were leaving for the day. Their school bus was hit and four first-graders and the bus driver were killed. Just a few weeks ago, on January 6th, the day of the Armenian Christmas, 10 Kurdish Muslims and two Armenian Christians s on a bus leaving Aleppo were abducted by ISIS fighters. The two Armenians were taken from the room where the 12 were held; a few hours later one of the rebels came into the room holding two large cookie boxes, which they offered to the Kurds as gifts. They opened the boxes and found inside the heads of the two Armenians. On April 22, 2013, two bishops were kidnapped while on a humanitarian mission, and we still have no idea of their fate. Eleven nuns were abducted from the historic city of Maaloula and they are being held in captivity. Forty churches have been looted, burned, or destroyed. Nearly 500,000 Christians are internally displaced. Another 300,000 have had to flee from Syria altogether.

We came here to the United States, at the invitation of Barnabas Aid and the Westminster Institute, because we believe these stories and many others have not been heard. The media and human rights groups in the West have been largely silent on the ordeal of the Christians in Syria. But we have been greatly encouraged by the very powerful response of those we met with—members of the Congress and Senate, State Department, U.S. Institute of Peace, NGOs, academics, church leaders, media and interested citizens. All acknowledge the difficulty of the situation in Syria, and that there is no easy resolution to the war. However, all agreed that religious freedom and protection of minorities must be a part of any future in Syria. We must make every effort to preserve the mosaic of religions and ethnicities that have made up Syria for thousands of years, and Christians must be a part of this mosaic, in this country that Pope John Paul II called the Cradle of Christianity.

Syria has become the central battleground for Al Qaeda and other extremists from around the globe. According to CNN, Israeli Army Intelligence reported on January 26th that an estimated 30,000 foreign jihadists are now fighting in Syria. We believe the only solution now to ending the spiraling violence lies with the Geneva peace process and in stopping the influx of foreign fighters into Syria. We urge the American government to make sure that these two elements go side by side.

We ask the American people to pray for Syria, to pray for an end to the violence, and to tell their lawmakers that religious freedom and the protection of minorities are important to them. The situation of the Christians in Syria is a tragic one, both for those who have been able to stay in their homes and those who have been displaced, and we therefore also appeal for humanitarian support. The refugee camps are unsafe for Christians, and so they must turn to their neighbors and families for help, often placing a tremendous burden on families already strained by three years of war.

The calling of the church is to serve as a prophetic voice, challenging governments and societies for the building of communities where peace, justice and freedom prevail. We are now calling on the United States as a superpower with a moral standing in the world–its leaders and citizens alike–to seek wisdom and understanding in dealing with conflict, in accordance with the values of their Founding Fathers.
May the peace of God be with us all.

Rev. Adib Awad, General Secretary of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon.
Rev. Dr Riad Jarjour, Presbyterian clergyman from Homs, Syria, formerly General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches (1994-2003).
H.E. Bishop Dionysius Jean Kawak, Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church.
His Grace Bishop Armash Nalbandian, Primate of the Armenian Church of Damascus.