Genocide and terrorism have gone unanswered for far too long

The events of the past week are fresh reminders that even though we live in the 21st century, we are not immune from the horrific atrocities of genocide and terrorism. These twin evils, which have personally impacted my family, are tragically all too common.

On Thursday, the United States government finally called the ruthless murders, beheadings, forced emigration, sexual enslavement and abuse of Christians and other religious groups in Iraq and Syria what it really is: genocide.

But the attacks in Brussels last week, which were committed by the same Islamic State groups that carry out the genocide in Iraq and Syria, only further prove that words alone will not do much in the face of a fast-paced network of radical Islamic terrorists bent on destroying the West.

The declaration of genocide may have raised the global moral conscience about these barbarous actions and availed victims of genocide at the hands of IS additional legal considerations under international agreements. But it does little to help those 130 innocent souls killed in Paris, 19 in Grand-Bassam in the Ivory Coast, 14 in San Bernardino, 34 in Brussels, 70 in Lahore, Pakistan, who were merely trying to celebrate Easter this past Sunday, and the countless other victims of Islamic terrorists around the world.

Words are important, but without action they have no power.

These cowardly acts strike close to my heart. Two of my grandparents were killed during the Armenian genocide in 1915 — an event still unrecognized by the country of Turkey and one that you can be jailed or killed for mentioning if you live in Turkey today.

During the persecutions of the Armenian genocide, thousands were marched into the Syrian desert with the expectation that they would die along the way before reaching their destination in Aleppo, Syria. In a cruel turn of history, some of the great-grandchildren of the survivors of these death marches are the very people who have been targeted for abuse and extermination.

I would not have been born if my parents weren’t fortunate enough to escape. They fled to Lebanon, where I was born into a Christian household.

My surviving grandmother owned a small grocery store; terrorists in Lebanon killed her when I was a small boy.

I was fortunate enough to come to America as a young man. I earned my degree at Cal Poly and learned how much you could achieve in America with faith, hard work and determination. But the death of my final surviving grandfather in the 1970s at the hands of terrorists was the catalyst for my choosing to stay in America, earn my citizenship and start my family here.

I saw so many Christians in my life persecuted for believing in Christ while living in Lebanon. It might be easy to forget how fortunate we are in America, but the true gift of liberty this great nation affords has never been lost on me.

How many tragedies must the world endure before we take action?

The Armenian genocide of 1915, the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 — have we so quickly forgotten?

It is, without a doubt, the responsibility of each successive generation of people of all faiths and nationalities to prevent any re-occurrence of this tragedy among all peoples throughout the world.

Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 75 on March 14 confirming these atrocities were in fact genocide; Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed it on March 17. Now it is time for the United States to fully commit to defeating the radical Islamic terrorism that is responsible for the genocide of Christians in the Middle East and tens of thousands of terror-related deaths around the world.

We need a united policy of more than just words. A similar national political unity that helped defeat the Soviet Union must be brought to bear against the ideology that produces this terrorism. Only when Democrats and Republicans work together to craft a bipartisan, united strategy can we truly turn the tide against radical Islamic terrorism around the world.

This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 11:31 PM with the headline "Genocide and terrorism have gone unanswered for far too long."