CWN - The United States created the conditions that led to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to Iraq’s leading Catholic prelate.
“The US is indirectly responsible for what is going on in Iraq,” said Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako. He said that American leaders promised to bring democracy to Iraq, “but ten years have passed and on the contrary we have gone backward.”
The Chaldean Patriarch had earlier been quoted as saying that “America is behind ISIS.” But he indicated that he was not suggesting a conspiracy between the US and the Islamic State. Rather, he explained, “the Americans left Iraq in the midst of a vacuum where there was no army to protect [the people] and ISIS and these jihadist groups have been present for four years.”
“America is responsible for what happened to the Christians in the East,” Patriarch Sako concluded. He charged that the Western world in general had failed to come to the aid of Iraq’s Christians. “The West watched us and it seemed they have ignored our suffering.”
“Our Muslim neighbors did not help us,” the Iraqi prelate added. He renewed an appeal to Islamic leaders to condemn the killing of Christians.
Patriarch Sako was even critical of other Eastern Catholic leaders who have met in Lebanon this week to draft an appeal to world leaders. “We don’t want statements,” he said.
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