At last the Obama administration has acknowledged that ISIS’s murderous atrocities against Christians and other minorities constitute genocide — but only after Congress all but forced it to admit the truth.
Mind you, the declaration is purely symbolic: It doesn’t oblige the US to do anything about the horror. So why did it take so long to admit what’s gone on for two years?
In a bipartisan vote of 393-0, the House last week declared ISIS’s actions genocide. The European Union did so long ago.
Meanwhile, under standing law, Team Obama faced a Thursday obligation to report to Congress whether ISIS was committing genocide. But late Wednesday, the White House said it would miss that deadline.
That announcement brought a firestorm of derision — prompting Secretary of State John Kerry to do a swift about-face and declare ISIS to be “genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions.”
Its specific targets, he said, are “Yazidis, Christians” — who are being killed “solely for their faith” — “and Shiite Muslims.”
Thing is, Barack Obama took office vowing to speak out against such atrocities. He even promised in his 2008 campaign to be the first president to speak “truthfully about the Armenian genocide” during World War I — though he still hasn’t gotten around to doing so, since it would infuriate Turkey, a US ally.
But telling the truth about ISIS’s genocide of Christians and other groups offends no one — not even ISIS: It’s proud of its extermination campaigns.
Rarely has genocide been so well-documented even as it was occurring. That the Obama administration had to be pushed into admitting the obvious is shameful.