The same fate awaits the next Westerner in line — an American by the name of Peter Kassig, who even converted to Islam to try to save his own life. But the murderers will not let up. Jihadi John is already sharpening his knife.
All this is happening because Islamic State is not an organization that can be defeated with slow, uncertain, limited action. It cannot be defeated without "boots on the ground." It is imperative to hit them with force; with waves of growing intensity. They must be attacked continuously, without breaks, without cease-fires and with the utmost determination.
The day of Yom Kippur, regardless of the Jewish holiday, was a turning point in the war against Islamic State. They were bombed, yet immediately resumed decapitating prisoners. The reality has become one of walking on the edge; of all or nothing-style fighting. There can be no compromise; there can be no cease-fire. You are either with us or against us.
The enlightened world must pummel Islamic State into a pulp. This cancer needs to be excised, leaving no metastases behind. If the world is soft, the way most greasy, petit-bourgeois masses tend to be, it will soon learn that these horrifying decapitations are in fact prompting thousands of new volunteers to join the ranks of Islamic State. A toothless war will come back to bite us like a boomerang. It will weaken the good guys.
It will not be an easy victory. In the West, there are those who are afraid and who prefer to shut their eyes tight as part of a head-in-the-sand policy. There are those who are truly indifferent. There are bleeding hearts who find partial justification for the Islamist decapitations. One of them wrote an article blaming the Western violence for the rise of Islamic State. Others, at the U.N. of course, wondered whether bombing Islamic State targets would be in line with international law, or whether it could be a violation of Syrian sovereignty.
The hypocrisy is still benefiting the terrorists’ side. In our regional conflict, Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately at Jewish populations without prior warning, and the IDF, before retaliating (with much more force, granted), warns every Gazan to leave their homes to avoid getting hurt. Who gets blamed by the U.N.? Of course it is Israel, which warns the enemy, and not Hamas which fires in every civilian direction.
If, however, the familiar indifference doesn’t trip up the West, Islamic State will be vanquished and forever disgraced. Furthermore, the rules of war and international law will be amended in order to allow democracies to effectively defend themselves. The existing rules are good for guiding conflicts between enlightened nations. But these days, with Islamic State and its ilk dominating the scene, the enlightened world will have to allow itself to fight in a more resolute, effective manner if it doesn’t want to be defeated by Islamic terror.
At the end of the tunnel, a significant overhaul of the rules of war awaits.
