Chris Smith

The idea that those who offend Islam must be punished is a malevolent idea.

If you don't mind me interrupting, how much are we talking about? I mean, ballpark.

Their whole economy--and until last year it was the fastest growing place in the world economically--depends on the security.

The only place where people are safe is in the Kurdistan region. And the only reason they are safe is because the peshmerga is defending them.

There is an obligation on the part of the United States and on the part of other countries to act. It is both a legal obligation and a moral obligation.

It isn't potential acts of genocide. Genocide actually took place, because ISIS is engaged in killing with the intent of exterminating the group.

If this doesn't rise to the level of genocide, I don't know what does.

They were late, they were asleep at the switch.

We must destroy ISIS militarily, if we can, but we cannot destroy with force of arms the religious ideology that sustains it.

Stable self-government grounded in religious tolerance and ultimately religious freedom is the only reliable antidote to the toxic religious convictions of Islamist terrorists.

The root cause is Islamist terrorism of the kind that hit us on 9/11.

We are witnessing the disappearance of Christians and Christianity from Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East, a religious, cultural genocide.

The notion that a strategy that relies on a more inclusive government, Iraqi Government, can work is a fallacy

The United States should prevail on Baghdad to end its vendetta against Kurdistan in the interest of jointly confronting the common enemy of ISIS.

The United States could do much more to assist the Kurdistan Regional Government to care for 1.25 million displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees now finding safety in Kurdistan.

You don't want to wait until everybody has been killed to determine that genocide took place, because you can't prevent it once it has actually happened.

The first is to recognize that ISIS is committing genocide against the Yezidis and the Christians.

And Saudi Arabia gets on the list every year, and what do they get? Not even a slap on the wrist.

I mean, again, having been one of the architects of the Wolf Act, there was no doubt that that was meant to be done every year. It was to be robust, and then the sanctions part was meant to really have teeth.

Our concern has been--that is why I think Mr. Farr's statement about low priority--it is not that you haven't done anything, and I would respectfully submit that under Secretary Kerry it has been increased, and it was at a much lower level…

Where does freedom of religion and the protection of rights fall on the administration's foreign policy priorities?

From what I have seen, also religious freedom and human rights seem to be ranked very low on the priority scale for this administration.

We must do everything possible to ensure that these communities are protected and allowed to remain, because it would indeed be a tragedy to lose such ancient communities at the hands of radical Islamist terrorist groups.

One of the wonderful things that the Congress does is to provide solid humanitarian assistance in both the budget that my office oversees and that USAID controls.

A regional court, a hybrid, something like Sierra Leone, might be the best way to go.