March 15, 2016
House unanimously votes to label ISIS atrocities against Christians ‘genocide’
By Thomas Lifson
A vote of the House of Representatives has rebuked the Obama administration’s obstinate refusal to acknowledge the horrifying genocide against Christians underway in the Middle Eastern territories controlled by ISIS. Bradford Richardson reports in the Washington Times:
The House of Representatives on Monday overwhelmingly approved a resolution declaring as “genocide” atrocities committed by the Islamic State against Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East.
HR 75 passed without a single dissenting vote, 393-0, sending a strong signal to Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who has been deliberating for months whether to declare genocide. The House speaker said he wasn’t optimistic about it.
There are important reasons why this blind-eyed stance of the Obama administration is destructive:
Doug Napier, senior counsel and executive director of the Alliance Defending Freedom International, said official recognition of genocide would trigger laws in United Nations to investigate and prosecute offenders, as well as oblige the U.S. to take measures to end the violence.
He said it is irresponsible that the genocide has not already been declared in the face of overwhelming evidence that Christians and other minorities are being specifically persecuted.
“Religious and ethnic minority groups in the Middle East are deliberately targeted by ISIS for destruction,” Mr. Napier said. “The number of Christians has dropped from 2 million to under 1 million in Syria, and from 1.4 million to under 260,000 in Iraq in just a few years. The atrocities include assassinations of church leaders, torture, mass murders, kidnapping, sexual enslavement and systematic rape of Christian and Yazidi girls and women, destruction of churches, monasteries and cemeteries.”
There is one person who could do more than anyone else to sway the Obama administration: UN Ambassador Samantha Power should publicly resign her post and demand that the Obama administration act out of conscience. Power has achieved fame, fortune, honor and position by writing a much-honored (Pulitzer and others) book about genocide. Wikipedia summarizes its moral message:
Power observes that American policymakers have been consistently reluctant to condemn mass atrocities as genocide or take responsibility for leading an international military intervention. She argues that without significant pressure from the American public, policymakers avoid the term "genocide" altogether. Instead, they appeal to the priority of national interests or argue (without merit, she contends) that a U.S. response would be futile and accelerate violence as a justification for inaction.[1]
Power’s silence reveals a craven lust for position and power over principle. History will not be kind to the Obama administration’s silence on genocide, and Powers’ moral failure is the most prominent. She is nothing more than an empty poseur of the virtue signaling type.
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