Life 'better' under Saddam says vicar of Baghdad

[sabra]

Source: UK Sunday Times

Life was “better” for Christians in Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein than it is today, according to the only Anglican vicar working in Baghdad.

Canon Andrew White, vicar of St George’s Church in the capital of Iraq told Times Online that day-to-day life was ‘a lot easier’ for Christians when the vicious dictator Saddam Hussein was President of the country. But he said he still believed removing him was the right thing to do, for the sake of the long-term future of the country and its inhabitants.

“It is still very difficult ," he said . " Not like it was under Saddam, it was a lot easier just day - to - day living. There are threats to these our people all the time. They know who the Christians are."

But the cleric, who is flown regularly to the US to advise President George Bush in person on what is happening in the country said he still thinks removing the dictator was the right thing to do. “For a while I didn’t, for a while I thought, things are so terrible but the reality was that there was no way the Iraqis could remove the regime themselves,” he said.

...

“It was better for Christians under Saddam. Now life is bad for everybody but it will change. Our hope has to be in God more than politics. I believe that’s the answer.”



Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3084957.ece

[Fovea]

1. We just need to send more souls

to meet their respective makers, and all will end well.

[ClintonTyree]

2. "Now life is bad for everybody but it will change".

Sure, as soon as the ethnic cleansing is completed things will be just hunky-dory in old Iraq. :eyes:

Just because something changes does NOT mean that it progresses. Granted, there's been BIG CHANGE in Iraq, but how many people think it's going to make for a stronger, more free Iraq? Besides those in the White House, that is.

[boricua79]

3. "there was no way for Iraqis to remove the regime themselves"

if you say so vicar.

Thousands of years of revolution and people's movements prove otherwise.

Keeping hoping on "god"....the same one that has abandoned your Christian folk to their deaths by the hands of Muslims in the country.

Incidentally, their God is YOUR God. Wrap your head around THAT conundrum.

[Doctor_J]

4. And what about the million or so Iraqis that have been killed SINCE

he was removed? And the 3 million that have been displaced?

[Hydra]

5. Idiots

The Christians thought they were going to benefit under Bush's rule- I guess it was only some of them.

[theredpen]

6. Carpetbagger asshole

Iraqi Christians didn't want this. Saddam's right-hand-man, Tariq Aziz (born Michael Yuhanna), was Christian. Saddam Hussein was the first leader in Iraq history to make it legal for Christians to teach Aramaic in their schools, which had helped keep the language from dying out. I agree that it's good he's gone, but it would have been better if he'd been deposed by someone who actually cared about the Iraqi people and not just their oil.

Here is a message from an Iraqi Christian, posted on Catholic News Service last March:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Four years of war have brought an increasing spiral of cruelty and killing to Iraq, and left the country in a state of chaos, said Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad, Iraq.

The war also has prompted a massive flight of Catholics and others from the country, leaving behind a shrinking Catholic minority, he said.

Bishop Warduni made the comments to Vatican Radio March 19, the fourth anniversary of the U.S.-led bombing and invasion of Iraq.

"Before the conflict broke out, I said that God does not want war in Iraq. Even then one could see that the consequences would be terrible," the bishop said.

"And in fact, the cruelty and the killing have increased from day to day. Children, youths, the old, the sick, we are all suffering, because the world is not thinking of what's good for the Iraqi people," he said.

"Everyone is thinking of their own interests and so the Iraqis have been forgotten. Terrorism is increasing, and with it the number of orphans and widows," he said.

Asked about estimates that more than 60,000 people have died in the conflict, Bishop Warduni said the number could be much higher. No one knows the real number, he said.

"So often we go out of our homes uncertain whether we'll return safe and sound. The kidnappings, the kamikazes, the car bombs, the missiles: You cannot eat calmly, study calmly or pray calmly," he said.

"So many people are afraid to come to church, and so many children are afraid to go to school," he said.

With Iraq's infrastructure nonexistent and electricity outages that last most of the day, everyone who can leave the country does so, he said.

The church tries to encourage those who remain, asking them to pray.

"Only the Lord can do something for Iraq," the bishop said.

Here's the new theological question of the day: can George Bush fuck something up so badly that even God can't fix it? Film at 11.

[roguevalley]

7. God has nothing to do with this. WE have to fix it. The oldest

Christian communities in the world, one of them, the Mandeans aligned with John the Baptist have persevered through centuries of bullshit and now they are falling away. This is not a good thing.
Not at all and only man can fix it.

[theredpen]

8. I was trying to be funny with the Bush/God comment

Obviously, man has to fix this.

[LynnTheDem]

9. Yes, only a george w. bUsh republic could make life worse

than Saddam Hussein.