As most I’m sure have already unfortunately heard, Islamic Jihadis with the Islamic State, the new Islamic Caliphate, gruesomely beheaded American journalist James Foley, whom they kidnapped in Syria in 2012. The video of the murder was posted online to taunt the United States. Before his execution, Foley was forced to read a statement condemning “my real killers, the U.S. government.” He said the Obama administration “hit the last nail in my coffin with the recent aerial campaign in Iraq.” Finally, “I wish I wasn’t an American.” Beside him was Steven Joel Sotloff, another American journalist and one of perhaps three other Americans under threat of death depending on Barack Obama’s “next decision.” It is an outrageously grisly indication of the barbaric nature of our enemy especially considering the tens of thousands that have already been beheaded, killed, buried alive, tortured and raped!
To be fair, in a statement to the country on Wednesday, President Obama began with appropriately touching words about Foley and his family, and he had stern words for his murderers – “Jim Foley’s life stands in stark contrast to his killers. Let’s be clear about ISIL, they have rampaged across cities and villages – killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children, and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims — both Sunni and Shia — by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can, for no other reason than they practice a different religion. They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people.” And that is very well said.
Almost at the same time, in an extremely rare admission, the Pentagon released a report saying it had attempted a Special Forces mission to rescue Foley earlier this summer. A fierce firefight occurred in Syria which is the first acknowledgment that United States military had “boots on the ground” in that country. One U.S. soldier was injured in that endeavor and the mission failed to free Foley or Sotloff because they were not present where intelligence said they would be. Clearly, the administration released this information to save face after Foley’s murder, though they claim it was to preempt imminent media reports. Publicly detailing a Special Forces operation was incredibly risky and foolish, as it greatly compromises sources, methods and future operational capabilities. And this is not the first occurrence of this in President Obama’s administration. Left out of the White House account, however, was an inconvenient report that Foley and Sotloff were captured by the Dawood Brigade, a group that defected to ISIL from the Free Syria Army which are the “moderate” rebels backed by the Obama administration.
Unfortunately, the president then ventured into politically correct nonsense about Islam. “ISIL speaks for no religion,” he said. “Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” He might want to check his copy of the Koran. It contains numerous verses calling on faithful Muslims to kill infidels. It’s where the term “jihad” originates — Koran-prescribed holy war against unbelievers, and if other Muslims get in the way, so be it. There are indeed peaceful Muslims, but to deny ugly reality and insist that Islam is only ‘The Religion of Peace’ is both ignorant, very dangerous and extremely disingenuous.
Obama also dismissed the idea of war: “ISIL may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.” Just because he doesn’t have the stomach for a fight doesn’t tell us anything about ISIL. In fact, this administration, via Mr. Brennan, then President Obama’s counterterrorism chief and now CIA director, previously stated a couple of years ago that the idea that Islamic terrorists would create a ‘caliphate state’ was “absurd”. “Our strategy is.. shaped by a deeper understanding of al Qaeda’s goals, strategy and tactics,” he said on June 29, 2011. “I’m not talking about al Qaeda’s grandiose vision of global domination through a violent Islamic caliphate. That vision is absurd, and we are not going to organize our counterterrorism policies against a feckless delusion that is never going to happen. We are not going to elevate these thugs and their murderous aspirations into something larger than they are.” (This may a been a slight miscalculation!?!)
“The United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people,” the president declared. “We will be vigilant and we will be relentless.” He promised a “common effort to extract this cancer, so that it does not spread.” Yet his tough words don’t match his actions. Hardly able to wait to get every U.S. soldier out of Iraq in 2011, and he’s bent over backwards to avoid sending more than a relative handful back now despite the sweeping advances of ISIL over wide swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. Instead, he’s called ISIL the “JV team” and dismissed the threat. The cancer has spread, and it is thanks to the vacuum the United States left by abandoning Iraq.
One major media outlet reports – ‘Military planners weighed the possibility of sending a small number of additional U.S. troops to Baghdad.’ U.S. forces also conducted more airstrikes, bringing the total to well over 80 since our involvement resumed. That’s all well and good, but it’s defensive and will not do anything to dislodge ISIL from it’s so-called caliphate much less defeat this barbaric group of terrorists.
“People like ISIL ultimately fail,” Obama pontificated Wednesday. “They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.” And, he assured, “One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century.” In translation – ISIL is on the “wrong side of history” – one of Obama’s favorite formulations used to spurn his political opponents. But ISIL won’t be defeated simply because Obama says they’re mean relics of another century. Unfortunately, those paying the price for Obama’s failed foreign policy will be those in the military along with a few brave souls in what remains of the American Free Press along with hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from different faiths or religions.
The president did at least take the time to call Foley’s family before returning to the golf course, which is a step rarely taken for the families of U.S. Armed Forces personnel killed in service to their country, much less someone from the press. Compare that to British Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut his vacation short to consider action given the jihadi in the murder video spoke with a British accent.
As what I highly consider is a ‘clear and present danger‘ to the entire civilized world, I ask all to please pray for all our leaders across the world trying to deal with this situation and ask God to give them guidance in this situation before it is overwhelmed by these barbaric and inhumane people.
