If President Barack Obama can’t find a way to say “radical Islamic extremist,” perhaps its less productive than wishful thinking to think he would describe the barbaric actions of ISIS against Christians in the region as genocide.
Obama seems to have listened a little too closely to his Mama when she told him, “Just because everyone else says it doesn’t mean you have to say it, too.”
The European Union recognizes the mass slaughter of Christians within ISIS controlled territory as genocide. There is literally no indication of Christian life where strict Islamic sharia law laws have been imposed. Christians have either been executed or driven out of their homes and out of the area.
Nina Shea, of Freedom House, a group that has documented ISIS atrocities, said, “it is very important to call it genocide, it’s important because it is the truth.”
“There’s a reluctance on the part of the administration to call it genocide against Christians. They have told us privately that they will call it genocide against Yazidis but not Christians,” she said.
“If we take the solemn vow of ‘never again’ as we have since the Jewish Holocaust under the Nazis, we have to call it as such for the Christians,” she said.
The administration appears nearly ready to describe the plight of the Yazidi people with the ‘genocidal’ label. The Yazidi are an ancient population of approximately 500,000 who practice a religion that incorporates elements of both Christianity and Islam. ISIS has denounced the Yazidi as devil worshipers and have directed followers to kill all male Yazidi and enslave Yazidi women and children.
Cameron Hudson, the director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, said, “What we found is there was a deliberate attempt by the forces of the Islamic State to not only ethnically cleanse the Yazidi population [forcibly remove them from their lands] but to exterminate them. And as they are continuing to hold, kidnap and enslave the [Yazidi] women and children, this a crime that is still being committed.
U.S. officials claim to need to iron out details before assigning a legal designation that might call for an adjustment to U.S. military strategy.
Meanwhile, CBN News noted members of the European Parliament state that the ethnic/religious cleansing of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities by ISIS has features of “genocide” and “war crimes.”
In Syria, it has been reported the Christian population has dropped from 1.2 million to less than 500,000.
In Iraq, it is estimated that almost two-thirds of the 1.5 million practitioners of Christianity have been either killed or forced to abandon their homes.
The head of the Near East Center for Strategic Engagement and an advisor to the Christian Assyrian Army, Retired U.S. Lt. Col. Sargis Sangari, stated President Obama acknowledges Yazidi genocide only to benefit the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG.)
“It now seems clear — They are doing so in order to keep the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] from failing financially, more than doing so for the need to save the Yazidis and Assyrians who have been destroyed by ISIS,” said Sangari, a decorated Iraq war veteran who served 20 years in the U.S. Army, in a post on the NEC-SE website.
The plight of Christians in the regions appears to draw no interest. But it gets more insidious.
“KRG has had financial issues, which finally exploded into protests across multiple provinces and cities of the KRG starting last week,” he added.
“It is apparent that the current administration is desperate to ensure that they do not fail in another foreign policy decision, which had them blindly supporting the current KRG leaders at the detriment of the Yazidis, Assyrians, and the Kurds who are being played by a few power brokers in the land,” explained Sangari. “They are willing to monetize the Yazidi genocide and marginalize the Assyrian genocide on behalf of the KRG lobby, which is very active through financial support in this year’s presidential election in the United States.”
“Unfortunately, for most Americans who are against the eradication of the Yazidi and Assyrians in their historical homelands, the money being used to suppress these ethnicities aspirations in the region is U.S. taxpayer funds which comes back into the hands of the politicians in DC under the cloak of KRG lobbying groups,” he added.