Warren meets Assad

Rev. Rick Warren met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. This account of the meeting speaks for itself.

DAMASCUS, (SANA)_ The meeting between President Bashar al-Assad and Pastor Rick Warren, a famous Protestant clergyman in the USA and an accompanying delegation on Sunday focused on the Syrian-American relations.

The American delegation stressed that the American administration is mistaken not to hold dialogue with Syria. The importance of dialogue among religions and achieving the just and comprehensive peace in the region which leads for stability and prosperity were emphasized during the meeting.

Dialogue? Syria is one of the pair of terrorist states that funds Hezbollah. It has kept a jackboot on Lebanon for far too long and continues to insert itself into Lebanese politics. Syria has stirred up trouble for Israel and for the US, in Iraq, and has been connected to anti-American terrorism for decades. So the question is, what’s the starting point for this dialogue, Rev. Warren?

Pastor Warren hailed the religious coexistence, tolerance and stability that the Syrian society is enjoying due to the wise leadership of President al-Assad, asserting that he will convey the true image about Syria to the American people.

He offered to President al-Assad a memorial drawing as a gift to the Syrian people for their generosity and hospitality, thanking their efforts exerted for maintaining peace and harmony.

This is why private citizens are banned from directly conducting foreign policy. They get used by the world’s dictators and thugs. Assad met perfunctorily with Warren, got the photo op, and now gets to add whatever propaganda angle he wants to the story, which was published in Syria’s state-run press. Warren can deny hailing Assad’s enlightened rule all he wants to when he comes back to the States, but Christians in Syria only see the propaganda version, which has the big American preacher lauding Assad’s enlightened rule (meanwhile, like most Islamic countries, Syria persecutes Christians). I doubt Syria’s Christian minority find this story encouraging. And that’s the nice way of looking at this. The less nice way is to assume that Warren did hail Assad, which he may well have on the naive assumption that dialogue and piling on the praise would do some good.

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