images

On Tuesday, the militant group ISIL released a video showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley as an act of retaliation for the U.S. airstrikes against militant targets in Iraq.

Reuter’s news service reported the Islamic State posted a video on Tuesday that purported to show the beheading of Foley in revenge for U.S. air strikes in Iraq. It prompted widespread revulsion that could push Western powers into further action against the group.

Reuters continued, U.S. officials said on Wednesday intelligence analysts had concluded that the video, titled “A Message to America,” was authentic. It also showed images of another U.S. journalist, Steven Sotloff, whose fate Islamic State said depends on how the United States acts in Iraq.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday, the militant group released a video, Titled “A Message to America,” the video shows the journalist kneeling in a desert landscape, clad in an orange jumpsuit — an apparent reference to the uniforms worn by prisoners at the American military detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Standing to his left is a masked ISIS fighter, who begins speaking in English, with what sounds like an East London accent. Pulling out a knife, he says that Mr. Foley’s execution is in retaliation for the recent American airstrikes ordered by President Obama against the extremist group in Iraq.

The Times continued to report that Mr. Foley made a statement before he was killed, “I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers — the U.S. government — for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacent criminality,” Mr. Foley says in the video, which was uploaded to the online account of the al-Furqan Media Foundation, according to SITE, an organization that follows jihadist groups. He ends saying that when American soldiers began dropping bombs on Iraq this month, “they signed my death certificate.”

James Foley was kidnapped in November 2012, while covering the ongoing civil war in northern Syria.  He was one of over 30 reporters who have disappeared while covering the in Syria, and most the reporters are westerners

President Obama, making brief remarks from Martha’s Vineyard stating, “ISIL has no place in the 21st century.”

The president continued, “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.”

Obama mentioned in his statement, “The United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people.  We will be vigilant and we will be relentless.  When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.  And we act against ISIL, standing alongside others.”

The president encouraged all nations to eradicate this threat, “From governments and peoples across the Middle East there has to be a common effort to extract this cancer, so that it does not spread.  There has to be a clear rejection of these kinds of nihilistic ideologies.  One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century.”

This brutal killing of Mr. Foley places the president in a precarious situation as he has been unable to articulate a coherent strategy on how he plans to confront the threat emanating from ISIL.

So far the U.S. has launched defensive airstrikes in Iraq, and made some gains such as supporting Kurdish fighters, known as the Peshmerga retaking the Mosul Dam.

Unfortunately, the Peshmerga are badly outgunned by the better equipped militant fighters and still haven’t received comparable military equipment from the United States.

Right now the president hasn’t articulated what strategy he plans to peruse in rolling back ISIL in Iraq and in its base of operations in Syria.

The president will be forced to make a decision sooner rather than later; if not the situation will only spiral out of control.