Wednesday, February 04, 2015

ISIS video of burned pilot shows they‘re serious — and we aren’t

4 February 2015

pilot cage ISIS

The sheer professionalism of ISIS’s latest snuff video is an indication that if anyone is kidding about the war on terror, it isn’t the terrorists.

The horrific video of Muath al-Kasaesbeh being burned alive in a cage, then crumpling to his knees and turning as black as charcoal before collapsing in a heap, is a sophisticated production. It uses advanced editing, camera movements and use of sound effects and music. This isn’t a crude piece of work any more than ISIS is, as President Obama once derided them, a “JV team.” No, these are big-leaguers, all-stars of savagery.

ISIS hopes the video will serve equally as a lesson (the pilot is made to look as if he is contemplating the horrible crimes he has committed in fighting the Islamist terrorists) and as entertainment to draw in the masses and make being tortured to death look like just deserts. It looks like the work of a director who grew up on “Rambo” films, but thought they were documentaries.

To ISIS, of course, even an Arab Muslim deserves the most grisly of fates if he is fighting the medieval, caliphate-seeking Islamist terror outfit.

In ISIS propaganda footage released earlier, citizens take part in a mock trial of al-Kasaesbeh. They say things like, “If he was a Muslim then he should not help the infidels. His missiles hit Muslim cities, mosques and civilians. He should be killed.” A boy adds, “We want to slaughter him. He hit the Muslim people and he is an apostate.”

Obama, in the manner of a bored professor who can’t believe he really has to spend any more time repeating the obvious to the remedial students, weighed in: “It’s just one more indication [pause] of the viciousness and [pause] barbarity of this organization. [pause] Aaand it, I think, will redouble [pause] the vigilance aaand determination on the part of our global coalition to, uh, make sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated. Ummmm. [Adopting a whimsical look] It also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology they’re operating off of, it’s bankrupt. [Suppressing a smirk, pivoting to a much more important subject.] We’re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better.”

Cue more happy talk about ObamaCare. You know, the important stuff on the agenda.

You can picture ISIS chortling at the limp and feckless way Obama delivered his tough talk. It’s like when a toy poodle barks at you.

So the president who walked away from the Iraq War that had already been won, thus creating the vacuum into which ISIS rushed, is responding with his usual vague promises to someday get serious.

How long will it be before the first captured American pilot is given the full ISIS treatment? Will Obama realize then that the JV team in this game is the one playing in Washington? President Ronald Reagan once said, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win. They lose.” Obama won’t even acknowledge the war we’re in.

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