Careful of the Christians, now.

Rand Paul Opposes U.S. Attack if It Could 'Kill Christians in Syria'

Perhaps he is thinking this is a fight brought on by Muslims and between differing factions of Muslims, with the Christians of the country victims of the violence of both sides.

That sounds basically right, but in any case I suspect Obama and others considering action don’t view it as a mission to rescue Syria’s Christians.

Syria has some 2.5 million Christians in a population of about 20 million.

On the other hand, in many places around the globe action to stop or frustrate Muslim terrorists or Islamist forces really is a sort of rescue mission, aimed at saving non-Muslims from Muslim violence.

By no means everywhere, of course.

And most of the Muslim violence we hear of is Muslim on Muslim violence.

But in many places, it is exactly that.

It makes you wonder how far American supporters of the global war on terror and the associated military and intelligence struggles see the thing as a whole as a vast outburst of Muslim violence aimed at non-Muslims and, most concerningly, in many places specifically at Christians.

Well, that is certainly not an incorrect description of the “clash of civilizations” that has dominated international politics since the end of the Cold War.

And that is certainly the viewpoint of the ultra-hawks at Front Page, Jihad Watch, and other venues where the whole business is seen primarily as an outburst of Muslim violence and aggression against people who are not Muslims, worldwide.

Those are the folks who see the struggle as, whether Obama likes it or not, a global war of self-defense against Islam, uniting the interests of all its targets.

The point they miss, of course, is that the US is very far, indeed, from the Muslim world and would not be a target of Muslim violence, at all, were it not for our endless interventions there, mostly on behalf of a tiny European settler state that would be one of their targets whether or not we chose to be its bodyguard, as we have done.

Anyway, are Paul’s remarks supposed to be a subtle reminder to Christian Zionists and other Christian supporters of neocon Hawkery and liberal interventionism that, so far, all our democracy-favoring or tyrant-punishing interventions in the “Arab Spring,” or in the earlier neocon wars, have done nothing but bring down worse persecution and violence on Christians living in Muslim lands?

Possibly a hint that, if their real concern is for the safety of Christians in Muslim lands from Muslim violence and oppression, maybe they ought to be opposing still more clumsy American attempts to control events there?

Just a thought.