A few years back, the horrific videos of Islamic terrorists sawing off the heads of kidnapped hostages on video had the Internet abuzz. Eventually, though, the tactic lost its shock value and it seemed to backfire, causing disgust among the Muslim populations who had otherwise been sympathetic to the Islamist cause.
Indeed, there were so many that I’d forgotten the names of most of the victims, even those about whom I’d posted at the time. Nick Berg. Kim Sun-il. Keith Maupin. Raja Azad and Sajad Naeem. Murat Yuce. Paul Johnson. Georgi Lazov and Ivaylo Kepov. Three unnamed Turkish hostages. Eugene Armstrong. Jack Hensley. Barea Nafea Dawoud Ibrahim. Three unnamed members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Twelve Nepalese hostages. Jamal Tewefic Salman. Mohammed Fawzi Abdaal Mutwalli. Kenneth Bigley. Imad Jabouri. Salvatore Santoro. Margaret Hassan. Shosei Koda. Luqman Hussein and Maher Kemal. Jassim Mohammed Hussein Mahdi. Ronald Schulz. Tom Fox. Four Russian diplomats. Three Iraqi “Wolf Brigade” commandos. Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker. Not to mention several hoaxes and dozens of hostages threatened with beheading who were eventually released or rescued. The incidents were so frequent that they became a blur.
Rusty Shackleford now reports on a variation on the theme that will outrage even the most jaded.
How bad are the Taliban? I thought I had seen horrible videos produced by al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other Islamist organizations. I’d seen the depth of their depravity when they beheaded Daniel Pearl. Experienced what I thought was the highest form of righteous indignation possible when they murdered dozens of other hostages. Felt like I knew what wrath was.
None of it even comes close. The images we posted earlier were bad. Add video and sound of a child—a child–slowly hacking away at a man’s head while he lives on…..no words can describe it.
I don’t need to watch snuff films to comprehend the “true face of our enemies” or to understand “why we fight” and “why we must win.” But the video and plenty of photos are available at the link for those otherwise inclined.
