Princeton’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence told Breitbart News that American “victory” against ISIS means that ISIS must be destroyed as Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) forces were.
“Let me tell you what victory looks like: ISIS/ISIL is decimated. It is left in precisely the shape in which we left Hitler’s allegedly invincible SS in 1945,” George said in a statement provided to Breitbart News. “Those of its leaders who are not sent to their eternal reward in the fighting are hunted down and tried for crimes against humanity. Displaced Christians and other victims of IS barbarism are returned to their lands and homes to live in peace and security. That is what victory looks like.”
George’s comments come in response to President Barack Obama’s remarks last week on his plan to take out ISIS–during which he never used the word “victory,” and never articulated what the end might look like. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said last week: “I didn’t bring my Webster’s dictionary with me up here” when asked by a reporter what a “victory” would look like for the United States against ISIS.
George is a thought leader whom the New York Times has called America’s “most influential conservative Christian thinker.” He has published many works that have influenced world leaders, and he has served in various international civil rights and religious liberty positions. In 2012, House Speaker John Boehner appointed George to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, for which he was elected chairman in 2013, and he’s served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the past.
George authored a bipartisan petition in August calling for the Obama administration to destroy ISIS. A spokesman told Breitbart News that George’s petition attracted over 15,000 signatures.
George’s comparison of ISIS to Hitler’s forces comes in the wake of Pope Francis comparing the crises burgeoning around the world to World War III.
“Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction,” Francis said in a homily at a Mass on Saturday during a visit to Italy’s largest war memorial where 100,000 WWI soldiers are buried, Reuters reported.
“War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: it seeks to grow by destroying,” Pope Francis said. “Greed, intolerance, the lust for power. These motives underlie the decision to go to war and they are too often justified by an ideology.”