The “Vicar of Baghdad” has quit Iraq after death threats and the beheading of children attached to his church by Islamic terrorists.
Canon Andrew White, vicar of Baghdad’s St. Georges, Iraq’s only Anglican church, said the only answer to the terrorism and killing by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) was American “boots on the ground.”
“They’re killing us,” he said during a recent visit to Israel. “We need the international community to stand with us. We need help to provide for our people.”
Canon White is no stranger to danger: he mediated the release of the Palestine National Fund’s director when he was kidnapped in 2001; mediated the stand-off between the Israeli army and Palestinian gunmen held-up in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002. In 2007, Canon White, who served as the special envoy to the Middle East for the Archbishop of Canterbury, raised the ransom and negotiated the release of his church’s kidnapped lay leader.
He has been forced to flee Iraq on other occasions, but this time he was warned by his archbishop to leave after threats from ISIS and following the beheading by the terror group of children.
Asked whether ISIS could be reasoned with, Canon White said, “No.” He added, “ISIS is driven by that passion that Iraq has gone very, very wrong. Among terrorists, often they have lost something big. And the Sunnis have lost ultimately their power, their responsibility and their significance. Under the Saddam Hussein regime they had essence; now they have nothing.
“We can kill a few ISIS people from the clouds; we can kill some of our innocent civilians; but we can’t really bring about change” until the ground troops enter the fray. “American ground troops,” he said.
Canon White said U.S. President Barack Obama made the mistake of pulling out of Iraq before the country could guarantee the safety of the people… Read More
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