Perhaps the situation in Egypt will resolve itself peacefully. Or perhaps we'll see a long stretch of public unrest before the nation finally stumbles its way into a new form of stable government. But there's one easy prediction to make: Whatever happens, Egypt's Coptic Christians are going to be hurt, unless the United States makes a major diplomatic effort to help them.

About 10% of the Egyptian population (and declining, down more than half over the past century ), these people have suffered discrimination under 30 years of rule by the now-embattled president, Hosni Mubarak. And they've seen that discrimination ratcheted up into open persecution during the current unrest, which began with a car bomb in Alexandria killing 21 at a Coptic church on Jan. 1 and continued through the massacre of 11 Christians in the village of Sharona on Jan. 30.

So why should they expect improvement from a new government? Particularly one in which the radical Muslim Brotherhood is certain to play a major role? The Copts are under the screw, and somehow, every time modern Egyptian history makes a turn, it ends up biting down harder on the nation's religious minorities.