Say ‘fly in the face’ and the ISIS did it again! The Islamic militant group released a video on Tuesday showing the second beheading of an American hostage in two weeks and blamed President Obama for the killing. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria had posted a video earlier that showed the beheading of James Foley, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Syria nearly two years ago. The video was concluded with the masked fighter threatening to kill Steven Sotloff, another American freelance journalist, who was being held alongside Foley. The hostage, Steven J. Sotloff, is shown in the video kneeling like the Foley as a masked figure stands besides wielding a knife. Prisoner Sotloff is forced to speak before the camera and described himself as “paying the price” for Mr. Obama’s decision to strike the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in northern Iraq. The US administration has not yet authenticated the video. However, it is believed by members of Sotloff’s family that he had been killed. Mr. Sotloff appeared almost completely bald and had only stubble on his face. He was made to wear the same Orange Uniform put on Foley and the Prisoners of barbed American Detention Camp at Cuba.
A masked fighter speaking in British-East London accented, similar to Foley video, declared, “I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State. Just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.” The video, titled “A Second Message to America.” The ISIS was threatening to behead another captive, a Briton it identified as David Cawthorne Haines. ISIS is currently holding two Americans and three Britons, most of them aid workers.
The all times so-sure Americans in most of the matters are confused and have not yet formulated a clear strategy – Use military force against the militants in Syria or not? How long it will take for Pentagon to take a precipitated action against ISIS after appearance of these harrowing images of Americans with knives to their throats? According to Mr. Daniel J. Benjamin, a former State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator : “That pressure is often the enemy of good policy. There will be a clamor for the president to take military action, which may not be effective. If he conducts airstrikes and does not get the desired effect, there’ll be pressure for more airstrikes, and then to put boots on the ground.”
Mr. Sotloff, had been writing for ‘Time’ magazine and other publications, He had also covered the stormy days of the Arab Spring and his capture by ISIS was largely kept a secret for months at the request of his family. Last Thursday, Mr. Sotloff’s mother, Mrs. Shirley, appealed to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed Caliph of the Muslim world, to grant amnesty to her son. “I ask you to use your authority to spare his life.”
Behind all this blood-letting in the Middle East, lies the hazy politics of the West. They want to induct Democracy and simultaneously they want to retain the most brutal dictatorships upon plant earth to serve as their vassals. They want to eat the cake and have it also.
Any student of recent history of Middle East knows well that the virtual inventor of the “ISIS” is none other than former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In 2006, during the peak of the U.S.–Iran conflict, she prompted all Sunni states to set up a “Sunni belt” in response to the alleged “Shia belt” that Iran had supposedly created against Arab Sunnis. The Lebanese government was offered military to crush ‘Hezbollah’ in Lebanon. Then the Secretary-General of the Saudi National Security Council, the infamous Prince Bandar bin Sultan was assigned the task to create the brutal groups such as Al-Nusra Front and “ISIS” to fight the Assad regime in Syria.
The credibility of the humanitarian motives of the West can be measured by the fact that the same governments did not say a word about the atrocities of the Israeli government in Gaza against innocent kids and women. There is an absolute silence about the suffering of the Palestinians !
It is interesting to note that the U.S. neoconservatives have long been talking about a policy of “creative chaos” in the Middle East. The “creativity” of this chaos consists of the consolidation of U.S. hegemony in the region by causing area-wide instability and generating more “failed states” to keep their controls over BENZENE and Iron dome protection for their protégé – Israel.
