Robert Wright sees a coming split. Excerpt:

Are we really ready to go to war against two million Christians? According to Tony Karon’s reporting in Time, President Assad hopes to keep Christians in his coalition by harnessing their fear of a radical Islamist takeover.

So far they seem to be sticking with him, and word of their allegiance is reaching American Christians. The evangelical press is reporting that Syrian Christians fear Assad’s fall and is quoting them as warning against foreign intervention. Catholic periodicals convey similar concerns, and illustrate them with, for example, reports that Syrian rebels are using Christians as human shields. And Jihad Watch, the right-wing website run by Robert Spencer, a Catholic, bemoans what will happen to Syrian Christians as “Assad’s enemies divide the spoils of the fallen regime.” (Spencer has in the past been skeptical of interventions, but he reaches conservative Christians who have been less skeptical.) The alliance between neocons and conservative Christians that has worked in the past is going to be harder to put together this time.

There can be no doubt that Assad is a wicked man. There can be no doubt that Assad’s fall would be as disastrous for the ancient Christian population of Syria as Saddam’s fall was for the Christians of Iraq. Not that most American Christians cared. From the NYT:

Iraq’s dwindling Christians, driven from their homes by attacks and intimidation, are beginning to abandon the havens they had found in the country’s north, discouraged by unemployment and a creeping fear that the violence they had fled was catching up to them.

Their quiet exodus to Turkey, Jordan, Europe and the United States is the latest chapter of a seemingly inexorable decline that many religious leaders say tolls the twilight of Christianity in a land where city skylines have long been marked by both minarets and church steeples. Recent assessments say that Iraq’s Christian population has now fallen by more than half since the 2003 American invasion, and with the military’s departure, some Christians say they lost a protector of last resort.