There has been another outrageously evil attack in which Islamist terrorists target children, this time in Pakistan:
Militants from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say.Officials say the attack in the north-western city is over, with all the attackers killed. Seven militants took part in all, according to the army.
Gunman methodically went from room to room and shot most of the victims in the head. The terrorists are reported to have been wearing suicide vests, and this article indicates that some of those vests were set off after Pakistani security forces came to the scene. The school appears to have had its own security, but:
The gunmen, who several students said communicated with each other in a foreign language, possibly Arabic, managed to slip past the school’s tight security because at least some of them were wearing Pakistani military uniforms, some witnesses said.
When I wrote the introductory sentence to this post, I was careful to say that this attack involved the targeting of children. It is important to state that the killing of children was completely intentional and the main goal of the operation, rather than children being accidental collateral damage in an attack on other people. This is an important distinction, a line the terrorists (and the left) purposely blur in statements such as this:
“We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. “We want them to feel the pain.”
It is highly likely that the Pakistani government does not “target” their families and females, although some have probably been killed as collateral damage. But there is no question that children were targeted here, and that this is often the terrorists’ m.o.. We’ve seen it a great deal when Palestinian terrorists work in Israel, for example. Here the rationale, if you can call it that, was that a lot of these victims were children of army personnel; in Israel, the Palestinians often say that since all Israelis serve in the armed forces, all children are fair game as targets because they grow up to be soldiers. It’s evil sophistry, but many Western leftists will parrot these arguments with approval.
President Obama used the word “depraved” to describe the attack. It’s an old-fashioned term but it fits the situation well. But that doesn’t mean this was a random act of insanity. It is a purposeful approach, one with that of ISIS and other Muslim terrorist groups who want to sow fear and the deepest grief possible.
Of course, by doing so they might motivate the Pakistini government and its people to step up the fight against them. Perhaps they don’t care, or perhaps that’s what they want, because they think that they are on the side of righteousness and will prevail.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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