MARK STEIN: HEADS WE LOSE
http://www.steynonline.com/6590/heads-we-lose
As ISIS prepares to take the Turkish border city of Kobani, the new Caliphate’s use of social media as a promotional tool (which is rather more effective than, say, the Democrats’ or Justin Trudeau’s) has begun to inspire what Obama would presumably call the jihad’s junior “junior varsity” teams:
Boko Haram, the extremist Islamic group, reportedly beheaded seven people Monday in Nigeria in revenge attacks, which were described by one resident as the way butchers “slaughter goats.”
From the report, you might get the impression that that’s a figure of speech. But it’s literally true. At the end of my piece on the beheading by an infidel-hating Muslim Oklahoman of his female colleague Colleen Hufford, I wrote:
It is not a pleasant way to die, in part because it requires more expertise than you might think. A decade ago, a young lady in my employ emailed a backgrounder on the subject to me in my room at the Grand Hyatt in Amman the night before I set off on my motoring tour of Iraq. If you’re lucky, your killer will insert the knife from the side, the sharp edge pointing to your front. One skilled thrust forward will cut the jugular, the carotid artery, the esophagus – and it will all be over in seconds. On the evidence of their social media videos, the ISIS boys are not that good: They go in from the front, blade facing backward, sawing back and forth for minutes on end.
That’s like “slaughtering goats”. You go in from the front because you need maximum blood loss to tenderize the meat. When ISIS and Boko Haram decapitate men, and women and children, in that manner, they do so not simply to kill us but to kill us as animals. Or as this Euro-jihadist puts it:
I asked him, ‘Is it good to kill people?’ He said, ‘If they’re not Muslim, yes.’
Because, if they’re not Muslim, they’re not really “people”. Which is why it is necessary to slaughter them like goats.
~The Great Re-Primitivization spreads. ISIS will soon be beheading their way through Kobani. Dismissed only a few months ago by Obama as “jayvees”, the new Caliphate now controls a huge and highly lucrative swathe of Syria and Iraq and mans border posts with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and, once Kobani falls, the major part of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. But this latest conquest is different from the earlier ones in that it happened after the so-called pushback by Obama and his grand coalition. ISIS seem to have grasped instinctively that Obama wasn’t serious, that he didn’t mean it – and that his handful of desultory air strikes each day were intended to neutralize the issue before November’s election, and nothing more. Scott Johnson suggests watching General Dempsey in this ABC News appearance:
Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey gave the powerful impression of a man resigned to defeat in his interview yesterday with Martha Raddatz on ABC News (video below), discussing the imminent fall of Kobani in Syria.
General Dempsey, what’s the plan? We know ISIS is for real. It appears that the constraints under which you are operating may have you down. Is that right?
And why wouldn’t he be down? The civilized world is headless.
Turkey, of course, is a Nato member, and, under Article Five, an attack thereon would be an attack on all – not just on Turkey, but on Britain, Germany, Italy and America, too. But ISIS are already being bombed by the US and its allies, to very little effect. Are they sufficiently confident to push on and take a Nato nation’s sovereign territory?
~I started the day this morning with Jack & Ben on Up And At ‘Em on Twin Cities NewsTalk. You can listen to the audio here. Tomorrow evening, Jack and, indeed, Ben will be among the audience at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis for An Evening With Mark Steyn, presented by the Center of the American Experiment. I’m looking forward to it.
~When I’m back from Minneapolis, it’s on to serious book-launch duties. The latest addition to the Steyn oeuvre hits bookstores on October 20th: The [Un]documented Mark Steyn. You can order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Indigo-Chapters in Canada, and other retailers: at Amazon Canada, it’s already tickling the nether regions of the Politics hit parade (although there’s a lot more than politics in it). I’m happy to say that the royalties will go to prop up my end of the upcoming Mann vs Steyn trial of the century, so watch this space for more news of promotional interviews and whatnot as the big day looms.
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