America finally did what too many politicians talked about and never delivered: President Trump ordered strikes against Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria after appalling reports of Christians being slaughtered. The Pentagon confirmed the operation and Trump framed it as a direct response to what he and conservative leaders rightly call an existential threat to Christian communities.
Those strikes were not a rogue action; U.S. officials say they were carried out in coordination with Nigerian authorities and focused on targets in Sokoto state, where extremist factions have terrorized villagers for years. Abuja’s foreign minister confirmed that intelligence was shared and that the Nigerian government approved the operation, undercutting the usual left-wing narrative that this was an illegal American intervention.
On the news shows, Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia put it plainly: this is a massacre of Christians that cannot be ignored and America has a moral duty to act. Moore has been pushing for tougher steps, including redesignation of Nigeria as a country of particular concern and investigations into the scale of religious violence — pressure that helped move the administration to act.
Conservative Americans should cheer that leadership, not apologize for it. For too long, elites and career diplomats looked the other way while persecuted Christians begged for help; Trump’s readiness to use American power to defend religious freedom reclaims the moral clarity this country was founded on.
Let’s be clear: the Nigerian government and some international voices push back, saying the violence is complex and not purely religious, and they warn against simplistic portrayals. Those objections deserve scrutiny — but they do not erase the photos, the witness accounts, and the decades of targeted slaughter of Christian farming communities across the Middle Belt that American conservatives have been sounding the alarm about.
Prudent conservatives should also demand accountability and realism about the limits of a single strike. Reports indicate the initial strikes may have hit empty terrain and the long-term solution will require sustained pressure, better intelligence cooperation, and real consequences for Nigerian officials who tolerate this violence. Washington cannot be satisfied with photo-ops; we must follow through with the tools of statecraft that actually protect people.
Congress must back leaders like Riley Moore and Tom Cole who are asking for thorough investigations and a durable policy to defend persecuted Christians abroad. If the United States is to be a beacon of freedom and a defender of the oppressed, conservatives in Washington should support targeted sanctions, intelligence-sharing, and measured military options while pushing local governments to stop appeasing extremists.
