Christian Iraq

I've been thinking about the Conquistadors, and the sense in which the twin pillars of church and state translate quite readily into the two prongs of military and missionary persuasion when conquest or liberation is afoot, and how this in turn plays into the perception of crusade, which may in turn call forth its mirror image response, jihad...

Franklin Graham's missionaries following (accompanying?) US troops into Baghdad, then, and the reverse of that, the flight of Iraq's native Christians...

One more paradox in a world of unintended consequences...