Providing us with yet more evidence that leadership in addressing humanitarian crises across has passed to Western European powers, France has offered asylum to Iraqi Christians fleeing persecution from the Islamic State (formerly ISIL). Radio Free Europe reports:

[F]rance says it is ready to welcome Christians from northern Iraq who have been told by Islamic extremists ruling the region to either convert to Islam, pay a religious tax, or face death.

France’s foreign and interior ministers said in a joint statement in Paris on July 28 that “we are ready, if they wish, to facilitate their asylum on our soil.”

That this report has surfaced in a media outlet officially sponsored by the United States government is ironic. Our country under the Obama administration has developed a tendency to turn our backs on the plight of Christians in the Middle East*. As Breitbart reported, Iraqi Christians in the United States rallied at the White House this past Saturday chanting, “Obama, Obama, where are you? Iraqi Christians call for you!” The call appears to have fallen on deaf ears. As RedState’s streiff has noted, Obama is still pushing ahead with his request to repeal the AUMF for the Iraq War while giving us nothing to replace it. This comes as Christians in the region are begging for international military intervention to save them from either certain death or brutal submission, including the jizya tax. Furthermore, it is evident that the Obama administration has been pushing for the United States to abandon Iraq even with foreknowledge of ISIL’s rise, if the testimony of Brett McGurk is to be believed. Cliff Smith, writing for the Daily Caller, says it best:

By calling for the AUMF to be repealed the same time Iraqi Christians are being driven out of their 2000 year-old home and murdered, the Obama administration has turned on its head John F. Kennedy’s famous declaration that we would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” and has emboldened the same ideology that destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan and led to 9/11. Instead, coupled with his shameful inaction concerning Ukraine, the administration has made quite clear that he sees foreign affairs as a political game to be managed, not a victory to be won by facts on the ground. Right now, Iraqi Christians are paying the price for his failure. Unfortunately, they will not be the last to do so.

In his selfish desire to appease the far Left, which has been wanting us to unilaterally and completely withdraw from Iraq since the war started, Obama is putting thousands of Christians at risk of some of the worst persecutions since the days of the Soviet, although even the Soviets were not as brutal as the Islamic State is. Last year, I wrote of the plight of Egypt’s Christians during the riots and subsequent ouster of the Morsi regime. The situation for them has gotten better, if only by a small amount. The plight of Iraqi Christians–or what’s left of them–is more dire than those in Egypt, and it’s getting worse with every passing day. It also does not appear that it will be mitigated in any way in the near future. All of this has been facilitated by the policies of Barack Obama. Under this administration, America has abdicated its position as leader of the free world and turned its back on some of the best traditions of our nation’s foreign policy.

*=Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), who has long been a leader in human rights issues, has a report detailing just how horrible of a situation Christians in the Middle East find themselves in. It’s a great  summation, but it was published in March of last year, meaning it is depressingly dated, as life for Christians in the region has gotten so much worse since then.