Response to comments from my previous post

I want to address 2 comments that I received after my previous post:

“This is inaccurate. They developed from the Syrian civil war and have been taking over parts of Iraq to create their own Caliphate. This is what happens if you have the tribes separate. One would try to dominate and take over the others by killing. The truth is not ignorance.”

ISIS stands for the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” The founder and leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was born in Iraq outside the town of Samarra. He was imprisoned in the US detention facility Camp Bucca. After his detention, al-Baghdadi joined the group al-Qaeda in Iraq that also went by the name the “Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).” ISI was founded in 2006.

ISI carried at different terrorist acts against US troops as well as the newly formed Iraqi government. In 2013, after the Syrian Civil War began, al-Qaeda in Iraq merged with the Syrian terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra. ISI changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It is worth noting that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was radicalized during his detention in Camp Bucca. He went in as a moderate who avoided violence and came out an extremist.

“When I read your post I was really shocked that you would say those things. You sounded arrogant and like you hated America. You didn’t sound like the Jeff Diego I know.”

Firstly, I want to say thank you for reading my previous post. Secondly, I want to say thank you for your courage to come talk to me in person in the spirit of Matthew 18; I really respect that. Thirdly, I want to say that I can love Jesus and love America, and at the same time denounce the evils that America has committed.

I wanted to remind my fellow Americans that in the past we have gone to war after being lied to by our elected officials. This is huge because that war resulted in a destabilized climate in the Middle East where extremism would eventually flourish. We lost the moral high ground when we tortured people. That war has caused over 100,000 civilian casualties and led to the rise of the most brutal and barbaric group of people in modern times. I was motivated to write those things because I believe that if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. Christians need to learn from those mistakes and be vocal when we hear politicians echoing the same policies implemented by the Bush Administration.