Wednesday, August 20, 2014

ISIS Beheads American Journalist

by JASmius

This is what you get when you merely take furtive swipes at bloodthirsty jihadists with "pinprick" airstrikes instead of laying waste to them with all-out aerial assaults:

The brutal jihadist group Islamic State on Tuesday claimed to have executed American journalist James Foley in revenge for U.S. airstrikes against its fighters in Iraq.

The Islamist radicals released a video showing a masked militant purportedly beheading the reporter, who has been missing since he was seized by armed men in Syria in November 2012.

"Find James Foley," the campaign run by his family to secure the 40-year-old freelancer's release, posted a public message online following the release of the video asking for time "to seek answers."

In the five-minute video, distributed online by known Islamic State (ISIS) sources, the group declares that Foley was killed after President Barack Obama ordered airstrikes against Islamic State positions in northern Iraq.

Ah, the magic of digital audio/video.  Let me ask y'all something.  Do you think these berserkers have been keeping James Foley alive for all this time for just this sort of contingency, or do you think they cut this poor bastard's head off the day they grabbed him and then threw the vid on a hard drive for that very same purpose?  I know how I would bet.  Foley has almost certainly been dead for two years, and now they conveniently roll out the saga of his execution on charges of being an "infidel".

Which moves us on to the next rhetorical question: What does ISIS think this vid is going to accomplish?  Isn't it obvious?  Back in the Bush years, this sort of thing would have been red meat to opposition Democrats and the Enemedia.  Already jackhammering the hapless 43rd POTUS into the ground on a daily basis on Iraq anyway, this would have been like pouring napalm on a blowtorch.  It'd have been right in the Left's Alinskyite wheelhouse: "Putting a human face on Iraq".  "Bush killed this man in cold blood".  Your imaginations can take it from there, I'm sure.

Of course, it wouldn't have intimidated Dubya in the slightest.

But now?  Under Obama?  Let's gauge the Regime's initial reaction:

"We have seen a video that purports to be the murder of U.S. citizen James Foley by ISIL," U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Tuesday in a statement, referring to the Islamic State, which has seized a swath of Iraq and Syria.

"The intelligence community is working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity," Hayden said. "If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist, and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends."

The video shows a man it says is Foley reading a statement that blames Obama for airstrikes on Islamic State militants in Iraq. At the end, after the man is beheaded, a second man, also identified as an American, is shown.

"The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision," the unnamed militant says.

First of all, if James Foley has been missing for two years, it seems to me that U.S. intelligence, given how tight Barack Obama is with the "Islamic jihadist community," ought to have more information on Foley's status.  I mean, he is - or was - a journalist, right?  So he was probably at least somewhat sympathetic to ISIS, right?  Why else was he in fricking eastern Syria?  So how is it the Regime has no knowledge about his status?  Hell, they kept really close tabs on Bowe Bergdahl for five years, didn't they?

Secondly, Caitlin Hayden's statement is pretty thin gruel.  Bland boilerplate.  "We are appalled."  Okay, glad to hear that, but what are you going to do about it?  Obvious answer?  Well, that's not necessarily cut & dried.

We know there'll be no media campaign against Barack Obama for any reason whatsoever, as there'd be with any Republican POTUS.  But that masks what dangerous public sentiments may be percolating across the fruitless plain.  I have previously discussed how the very fact of O's token air sorties against ISIS must have been motivated by a White House perception that they would suffer more PR damage from ignoring the wholesale genocides of religious minorities, Christians most especially, in northern Iraq than to appear to be doing something about them.  The last thing The One wants is to have to publicly admit that he was wrong about his Iraq abandonment and George W. Bush was right to invade and pacify and quasi-Westernize Iraq, much less surreptitiously tip-toe in his policy footsteps.  The pinprick airstrikes are his version of a compromise: look like he's taking action against the Islamic State, if only in a "humanitarian" sense, without actually slowing their advance in the slightest.  As, indeed, his own Pentagon admitted last week.

ISIS's counterstroke is the tried & true jihadist "hostage" card.  They know their enemy; they're familiar with the old adage, "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic."  They remember how fifty-three such hostages held O's antecedent Jimmy Carter at bay for over a year.  Only here, ISIS hasn't threatened to behead James Foley; they've already done it to demonstrate their willingness to do so (like there wasn't a gory overabundance of that willingness already) and threatened more where that came from.  Which suggests that they've got an entire library of such grisly executions of captured Americans that they can upload to the 'Net like a pez dispenser, but they're counting on King Hussein not to be able to intuit that.

The minefield this creates for O - well, not him, but his party, anyway, with the midterms only two and a half months away - is subtley hazardous.  Does he massively retaliate for the Foley atrocity, or even maintain the stately understatedness of his pinpricks and incense his nutroot supporters that look to be staying home in droves on November 4th anyway?  Or does he cowardly do nothing, or even halt the tactical air activity altogether to "save American lives," and outrage independent voters who may have taken seriously Samantha Powers' "responsibility to protect" BS?

Welcome to the "cycle of violence," Barry, where the only way to win is to blast the other side off the cycle.  Nobody ever said that knowing everything would be easy.


UPDATE: Sorry, Obamunists:



"Appalled" must have focus-grouped well.

Not to worry, though, Bammy-soxers; O may be going the Clinton subterfuge route you hate so much, but you know he's not really going to go back into Iraq with sufficient force to make a difference.  The Islamic State will still triumph.  So let not your hearts be troubled by the specter of any nascent "neocon" revival, especially from your demigod.  Have faith.

Exit thought: So martyred journalists get presidential pressers, but murdered two-star generals do not?

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