Video Transcript:
JOHN KERRY: My purpose in appearing before you today is to assert that - in my judgement - Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions. Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds and other minorities.
Lt. Col. Ralph Peters applauded Kerry for the admission, but still felt it came off weak.
PETERS: My belief is that the government still doesn’t have much sympathy with the destruction of 2,000 years of Christian civilization in the Middle East. Now the administration was shamed into this. They were forced into accepting this obvious genocide as genocide. But Bill [Hemmer], look at what Kerry said, listen to what he said. He said, “Not just Christians, also Yazidis.” That’s true, that’s valid. Then he includes the hundreds of millions of Shia Muslims. Shia and Sunni Muslims in the Middle East are in a great Islamic civil war, but by diluting it, by diluting the genocide, that means there’s less pressure on them to take in Christian refugees. The other problem - and the really biggest one and ugliest one - is he limited it to ISIS, to Daesh. And it’s not just them. It’s not just ISIS. This destruction that’s been accelerating for years of Christian civilization in the Middle East, it’s also al-Qaeda. It’s Jabhat al-Nusra. It’s Hamas. It’s Hezbollah. It’s even to an extent, the Muslim Brotherhood. So he made, Kerry and the administration made the smallest, tiniest statement they could make on genocide. Basically, “Ya, it’s genocide but look at this, this and this and we’re really not going to do anything.” I just believe it’s time for action. I believe this is something worth fighting for, but obviously the administration doesn’t.
Peters also said this statement exposes how the Obama administration feels about Islam and Christianity.
PETERS: Again, I’m glad he did it. But I feel like the - this administration still romanticizes Islam. It still finds Christians somehow distasteful. It’s almost as if the administration feels Christians have no real right to be in the Middle East. And Christians were there a long time before Muslims were - six centuries.
