Murdering 1,000 Christians Is Not Terrorism Says U.S.

by: Da Tagliare
In the past three years, over 1,000 Christians in Nigeria have been brutally murdered by an extremist Islamic group known as Boko Haram and the United States has refused to classify the group as being a terrorist organization.
Nigeria’s Christian leaders had asked the United States government to place Boko Haram on the list of terrorist organizations.  The radical Islamic group has vowed to eradicate all Christians from Nigerian soil and will continue to murder men, women and children in the process unless something is done to stop them.
Instead of declaring Boko Haram a terrorist organization, the U.S. government only placed three of the group’s leaders on a terrorist blacklist and then said that it was more important to address social inequalities in the country first.  Christian leaders in Nigeria said the actions or perhaps lack of action by the United States has only served to make the group bolder and more aggressive in their pursuit to exterminate the remaining Christians.

Appearing before House Foreign Affairs Committee, Christian Association of Nigeria President Ayo Oritsejafor said the decision was:

“The equivalent of designating (Osama) bin Laden a terrorist but failing to designate Al-Qaeda a terrorist organization.”
“By refusing to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization, the United States is sending a very clear message, not just to the federal government of Nigeria, but to the world that the murder of innocent Christians and Muslims who reject Islamism — and I make a clear distinction here between Islam and Islamism — are acceptable losses.”
“It is hypocritical for the United States and the international community to say that they believe in freedom and equality when their actions do not support those who are being persecuted.”

However, Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Johnny Carson told the committee that designating Boko Haram a terrorist organization would be counter-productive in trying to improve the governing of Nigeria, especially in the Muslim dominated northern region.
Carson testified,
“Boko Haram thrives because of social and economic problems in the north that the government must find a way of addressing.”
“A coordinated government effort to provide responsible, accountable governance to all Nigerians, while creating opportunities for economic growth, will diminish the political space in which Boko Haram operates.”
From everything I’ve read, Boko Haram is just like so many other Muslim groups that have vowed to cleanse their lands of Christians and Jews.  In reality, they are not any different than Hamas or al-Qaeda.

What concerns me about Carson’s comments is that it sounds like he wants the U.S. to start pouring millions of dollars into northern Nigeria to ease their financial strain in hopes that Boko Haram will stop murdering Christians.  This is a typical Democratic response to any problem – throw money at it and hope it fixes the problem, which it never does.
If I were Oritsejafor, I would have asked the House committee how many more Christians, men, women and children, have to die before they will consider Boko Haram to be a terrorist group?  I would ask them how to explain to his people that many more of them are going to have to die before anyone will do anything to stop the slaughter?  Then I would ask them about the United States role in the U.N. intervention in Kosovo back in 1998-99 when Christians were slaughtering Muslims in an ethnic cleansing, similar to what is happening today in Nigeria, only this time the Muslims are performing the ethnic cleansing against Christians.  The U.S. helped prevent the ethnic cleansing of Muslims but seems unwilling to do anything when roles are reversed.
Time and again, the U.S. State Department sides with Muslims and Muslim nations over Christians and their rights.  Carson’s statements before the House committee just reiterates our current government’s lack of concern for anything Christian and quest to preserve anything Muslim.