US, World Leaders Are Responsible for Syrian Refugee Crisis, Says 'Defying ISIS' Author Johnnie Moore

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Thursday, September 10, 2015

Displaced Iraqi Christians who fled from Islamic State militants in Mosul, pray at a school acting as a refugee camp in Erbil, Iraq, September 6, 2014. | (Photo: Reuters/Ahmed Jadallah)

An exhausted migrant holds his son as he speaks to a police officer at a collection point in the village of Roszke, Hungary, September 7, 2015. | (Photo: Reuters/Laszlo Balogh)

People hold posters with drawings depicting a drowned Syrian toddler during a demonstration for refugee rights in Istanbul, Turkey, September 3, 2015. The distraught father of two Syrian toddlers who drowned with their mother and several other migrants as they tried to reach Greece identified their bodies on Thursday and prepared to take them back to their home town of Kobani. Abdullah Kurdi collapsed in tears after emerging from a morgue in the city of Mugla near Bodrum, where the body of his three-year old son Aylan washed up on Wednesday. The image of Aylan, drowned off one of Turkey's most popular holiday resorts, went viral on social media and piled pressure on European leaders. Abdullah's family had been trying to emigrate to Canada after fleeing the war-torn town of Kobani, a revelation which also put Canada's Conservative government under fire from its political opponents. | (Photo: Reuters/Osman Orsal)

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"I believe we must provide abundant aid and security to those who aim to stay and we must provide aid and legal and safe means of immigration for those who choose to leave," Moore stated. "If we do not provide support and a legal and safe path of evacuation, then we will continue to watch people die at the hands of human traffickers and smugglers."

Catholic University law professor Robert Destro and former Congressman Frank Wolf, R-Va., added that the international community needs to do more to hold IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and other militants accountable for the heinous murders and rapes they've committed. One possible action would be the United Nations Security Council asking the International Criminal Court to begin an investigation into IS' crimes against humanity.

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless," Wolf said, quoting anti-Nazzi Lutheren Pastor Dietrick Bonhoeffer. "Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."

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Destro further argued that the U.S. government's trend of turning a blind eye to religious-based extremism is what is helping allow such acts of violence to continue.

"It is our own fault that we officially, here in the United States, have taken the position on foreign policy that religion is a problem, so we don't look at what goes on," Destro said. "There used to be a great old comic strip called Pogo. Pogo used to say, 'We have the met the enemy and he is us.' I think we have ourself to blame."

Aram Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, explained that part of the problem is that the U.S. has historically has not responded to cases of genocide because political leaders have viewed genocide as a "political commodity" instead of a "moral imperative."

He cited the religious persecution in Sudan and the Armenian genocide in Turkey as examples of how the U.S. government has previously overlooked human rights issues simply because of short-sighted "business" interests with those governments.

"Right now, the perpetrators of genocide know that if they commit these crimes and they have sufficient political power, they can get the world to back off, to not intervene and buy into their lies," Hamparian asserted. "I guarantee you, the crimes that are being committed today will be denied tomorrow. If they have sufficient power, the deniers of those crimes will get away with it. The atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and others will be written out of the history books."

At the end of the panel discussion, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., arrived to announce that he introduced a resolution on the House floor Wednesday that calls on the U.S. government to label IS' atrocities as genocide.

"Christians and other peoples have every much a right to their ancient homelands as anyone else. So today in Congress, we have introduced a resolution that calls this what it is — it's a genocide," Fortenberry told the audience.

"The initial response that we are getting, I think is a hopeful indication of what will happen in Congress, that this will gain momentum, and international consciousness will be raised, and that the difficult problem of how to deal with the unjust structures that have led to this genocide will be addressed quickly."