With the recent horrific murder of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh, the world may be galvanizing against the outlaw terrorist organization ISIS. The blatantly heinous way of killing Mr. al-Kasaesbeh, together with the propaganda film that announced it to the world, after a fortnight of duplicitous negotiations with the Jordanian government for the release of a failed Al Qaeda bomber imprisoned by the Jordanians, has rightly outraged the world community.
As a result of the telecasted video, Arab nations have stepped up their counterinsurgency actions against ISIS. Even President Obama, a man decidedly against military action unless it's a last resort, has now sought an extension of the War Powers Act to combat ISIS (or ISIL, as he insists on calling it, for whatever reason, despite the fact that everyone else in the country calls it ISIS).
The murders are truly disgusting. It's one thing to execute a person -- justifiably or not -- but to do so in ways that are cruel and then put those murders on the internet so everyone can see how terrorists -- bravely hiding behind a balaclava, typically -- killed a defenseless human being. Of course, their argument is that the person being murdered either killed innocents himself -- as in the case of Mr. al-Kasaesbeh -- or are blaspheming Islam, which warrants the ultimate sanction. Either way, from their perspective, they're justified in killing the worthless infidel or transgressor and degrading the humanity of their victim by publishing the person's horrible death.
Man's inhumanity to man is timeless. As President Obama so helpfully pointed out, Christians did some horrible things to their opponents (albeit some five hundred years ago) in the name of faith. Native Americans, Mayans, Viet Cong, North Koreans, Germans and Japanese also have track records for doing despicable things to other human beings with sophistry-based justifications.
The difference between those ancient atrocities and the ones going on today is, of course, that the internet now allows the craven assassins to broadcast their crimes in the name of not-too-subtle persuasion. Imagine what would have happened if the Germans had broadcast their crimes in concentration camps. or the Japanese theirs from Area 751, or the North Vietnamese in the Hanoi Hilton. In fact, they were more circumspect (well, not the Japanese so much, who ran newspaper reports of beheading contests held in Nanking) and kept their misdeeds under wraps, for the most part. ISIS, on the other hand, has no such scruples, other than to hide their faces to avoid direct retribution, seeming to revel in the debasing of other human beings.
Unfortunately, ISIS isn't exactly getting the kind of response it thought it was going to get, having begun with beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff and other journalists and aid workers. Now it has seen fit to burn a human being alive and blow a bound man's head off with a shotgun. Most of the world is understandably horrified by these pictures, as it should be. Yet there are those who believe that the images in these videos are too graphic to be seen.
I disagree.
To be sure, there are those who will have physical and emotional reactions to them that would be injurious to their health. At the same time, we need to know exactly how barbaric our enemies are, if only to steel ourselves against this insidious movement. I've watched the burning and shotgun death videos, and they are truly disgusting. Really, though, is watching a person being hanged any more comfortable? Is seeing a person drop dead of a heart attack more comforting? Either way, a human life is ending, and the fact that the thought of the death is uncomfortable shouldn't prevent us from preparing to fight people who would do us grievous harm.
For me, personally, the most troubling aspect about all the snuff films ISIS is producing is how the victims appear right before they're killed. In each and every one of them, the condemned either kneels or stands stoically before losing his life in some of the most brutal ways possible. Not one of them struggles or tries to run for it, no matter how vain the attempt might be. I suggested to Karen, who hasn't watched any of the videos, that they must have been drugged somehow. Today I read an article from some British newspaper in which indeed Mr. al-Kasaesbeh was so sedated he had no idea what awaited him. So besides tying their hands behind their backs, putting them in cages and ringing the execution zone with heavily armed paramilitaries, ISIS is drugging their victims to make them passive in the face of their own doom.
This is a war. Anyone who says it isn't is either lying or brain dead. War is ugly.
It's time we faced up to the fact and do everything we can to eradicate this evil from our midst.
(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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