Apropos today’s NRO article criticizing our policy towards Iraq’s beleaguered Christians: The percentage of Christians in the population of the Middle East has been declining since the Islamic conquest (through murder, conversion, and emigration), and I’m afraid that no extra effort by our State Department can reverse that. In fact, the spread of democracy is guaranteed to reduce the number of Christians further, which is one reason Christians in Syria and Egypt are leery of calls for popular government. The removal of Saddam was an important goal of U.S. foreign policy, but we need to understand that the disappearance of Christianity from Mesopotamia was an unavoidable consequence of success.