While Barack Obama was at the United Nations insisting that Islam is a peaceful faith, some of its most devoted adherents were slitting the throat of French tour guide Herve Gourdel and putting video of the murder on Twitter. This time it's not ISIS proper but an associated group operating in Algeria under the name Jund al-Khilafah. They had demanded that France end its role in the military action against ISIS. The French, to their credit, refused. But sadly it cost Gourdel his life in the grisly manner that has become the signature of these animals.
Fox News has more:
Serious question: If the objective here is really to stop the military attacks against ISIS, do these guys really think it's working? Because consider what's happened so far. First, ISIS beheads two Americans - James Foley and Steven Sotloff - and puts out video of the killings. The result is that the most dovish leftist ever to occupy the White House has decided to go to war against them. Then they behead a British hostage, David Haines, and that brings British Prime Minister David Cameron on board with the war effort. Now they behead the Frenchman Herve Gourdel, and even the avowed socialist who serves as president of France, Francois Hollande, refuses to back down in the fight against ISIS.
All of which makes me wonder: Is there another game at work here? Every time they behead a hostage, ISIS gets another nation revved up to bomb the hell out of them. Do they not know that? Or is this their way of scaring countries away from committing combat troops, since no one wants to be responsible for sending a guy into the field of battle who ends up being decapitated in one of these videos?
Lots of countries are on board for the fight, but not that many have committed ground troops. I think there are a lot of reasons for that. The reason the U.S. isn't doing it is that Obama and his political allies have successfully poisoned the political atmosphere for all openness of ground combat. Surely that sentiment has found its way to other nations as well.
Regardless, ISIS seems to think this is the way to intimidate everyone out of fighting them. On the surface it seems to be having the opposite effect but the long-term test will be the state ISIS ends up in when this is all said and done.
Don't forget this, though: ISIS does not exist in isolation. ISIS is merely one incarnation of radical Islam, which is the real enemy, and isn't going to go away because this particular arm of it might hopefully be destroyed. We don't really get a handle on this problem until we admit to ourselves what it really is, which is why blather like this isn't helping:
