There are no words.
From the BBC:
Jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS) have burned to death 45 people in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, the local police chief says.Exactly who these people were and why they were killed is not clear, but Col Qasim al-Obeidi said he believed some were members of the security forces.IS fighters captured much of the town, near Ain al-Asad air base, last week.Col Obeidi said a compound that houses the families of security personnel and local officials was now under attack.He pleaded for help from the government and the international community.The fighting and poor communications in the area make it difficult to confirm such reports.
This comes just two weeks after the world stood aghast at footage released by ISIS showing Jordanian pilot Moath al-Ksasbah locked in a cage and burned alive; and just days after another video showed the brutal beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Iraq.
Al-Baghdadi and the base at Ain al-Asad together compose a key location in the United States’ partnership against ISIS. Ain al-Asad is home to over 300 Marines and other military personnel tasked with training Iraqi troops; before last week, Al-Baghdadi was one of just a handful of areas in Anbar province still controlled by the Iraqi government. Now, the town is firmly in the hands of insurgents, and ISIS forces are busy moving both man and firepower into the region from strongholds in Syria.
This is why we’re fighting—and why many Americans are so disgusted with the Obama Administration’s rhetoric about the current conflict in the Middle East.
Earlier today, Kemberlee Kaye shined light on State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf’s disastrous interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Go read the whole thing, but here’s a snippet that exemplifies the problem with our response:
We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war.We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people. You’re right. There is no easy solution in the longterm to preventing and combating violent extremism. But if we can help countries work at the root causes of this. What makes these 17 year old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business, maybe we can try to chip away at this problem, while at the same time, going after the threat, taking on ISIL in Iraq, in Syria and helping our partners around the world.
Here’s the problem. Anyone who has done any meaningful study at all into how radical insurgencies grow knows that poverty and top-down neglect both contribute a great deal to an insurgent’s ability to attract and retain other potential insurgents. So, thanks, Marie, for proof that at least someone at the State Department has read a book in the last decade.
But most people, for better or for worse, don’t know that, and furthermore, don’t really give a damn about the root causes of international terrorism. All they know is that 45 people were burned alive, that 21 people had their heads sawed off, that an American aid worker was held prisoner and then killed, and that the people who did those things are still on the loose while Obama uses words like “despicable” and “cowardly” and “reject” instead of something along the lines of, “If you continue to do this we will wipe you from the face of the planet.”
Jordan and Egypt are currently bombing the hell out of key ISIS targets, and in the process not pulling any punches about what’s really going on. Aleister pointed out in an earlier post that most Americans disapprove of the way Obama is handling the ISIS threat—I wonder why?
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