Ken Blackwell and former Rep. Frank Wolf write that President Trump’s new National Security Adviser John Bolton has an opportunity to promote religious freedom and help persecuted Christians across the world.
The vice president’s October announcement that aid was coming gave the Christian and Yazidi communities hope. Now the money has begun to flow. After years of neglect, devastated communities are finally receiving the sort of support the United States has historically provided to those victimized by targeted extermination. USAID and the State Department have committed $55 million, and a chastened, more cooperative United Nations has pledged an additional $55 million to minority groups whose very survival has been in doubt since ISIS swept across Iraq’s Nineveh Plain in the summer of 2014.
However, those of us who have labored for years to promote international religious freedom as a top U.S. foreign policy priority, remain concerned whether America’s current policy toward ISIS genocide victims will ultimately succeed. We are worried because personnel is policy, and at the moment, there simply is not adequate personnel — at the State Department or the National Security Council.
While staffing at the State Department will take time with the departure of Secretary Rex Tillerson, we encourage newly appointed NSA Bolton to make swift and bold changes when he takes the reins of the NSC in early April. In particular, Bolton should immediately appoint a Special Advisor to the President for International Religious Freedom at the National Security Council. READ MORE
