Blog: On Monday, the House Passed Two Concurrent Resolutions: One to Condemn the Atrocities of ISIS and the Other to Condemn the Assad Government in Syria

Statement

On Monday, the House passed two concurrent resolutions: one to condemn the atrocities of ISIS and the other to condemn the Assad Government in Syria for war crimes against the Syrian people.

I voted "yes" on both because at times it's important government call things for what they are.

The first of the pair, H. Con. Res. 75, calls upon the Administration to recognize that the atrocities being carried out by ISIS against Christians and other religious groups are genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

ISIS isn't the first group to follow this playbook - trying to crush other faiths through violence to "prove" the superiority of its own. The Founders had seen this impulse in their time and enshrined religious liberty first in the Constitution because they viewed it as central to our ability to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Madison in fact once said that, "Conscience is the most sacred of all property." Indeed Viktor Frankl, in his book "Man's Search for Meaning," talked about how even after all has been taken, the one thing that still defines human freedom is the ability to think and believe as we choose. ISIS's attempts to control people's beliefs through fear and terror will ultimately prove to be short lived, but while they are here, it's important to call them for who they are and what they do. Policy is impossibly short-sighted without properly defining the problem.

The second, H. Con. Res 121, condemns another perpetrator of extreme violence in the Middle East, the government of Syria. This bill called for a tribunal to prosecute Syrian government officials who have committed war crimes. Syria's government has killed more than 140,000 people, and its treatment of its own citizens mirrors other brutal regimes in the past: the Soviet Union (20 million people), Maoist China (60 million people), and the Khmer Rouge (1.5 million people) to name a few. The actions of these governments towards their own citizens once again show how government too often becomes not a help, but a hindrance, to people's ability to live free lives.

Source