generalspeaking

Planes belonging to the Jordanian Royal Air Force fly over the headquarters of the family clan of pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh in the city of Karak Feb. 4, 2015. (Reuters) 

Vengeance is high on the agenda of the tribal and sectarian codes of conduct in the Middle East. It takes various forms, from clan and tribal blood feuds handed down from generation to generation, and it can be expressed as well by governments who find themselves in a dilemma of emulating the conformations of Western-style democracies in their seemingly lenient attitudes to crime and punishment, hoping to persuade their populations of the humanitarian angle as opposed to the revenge motive, a more primitive inheritance of mindset.

But there are times when a government is forced to do what a government must do. In a geography like the Middle East, where equal response is seen as a strength, not a weakness, and where forgiveness is virtually unknown -- as though ghoulish acts of crucifixion, mass rape, slaughter, beheadings and death-by-immolation are forgivable acts -- and diplomacy is seen as a failure to impose one's view by violence, the very opposite of the enlightened philosophical view of violence representing a failure of diplomacy; cautious responses are viewed as cowardice.

King Abdullah cannot afford to be seen as someone shrinking from what in the Middle East is a 'just' response to a gruesome horror. And so, the immediate response to the horrible death of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasseasbeh was the hanging of the failed suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi, along with al-Qaeda operative Ziad al-Karbouli. That act, in a country that had tried abolishing the death penalty but resurrected it in December acted as an immediate cathartic. 

The flashpoint geography where many Jordanians had viewed the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham sympathetically until the brutal murder of a Jordanian, has undergone a change of heart; support for ISIS in Jordan is no longer the problem it once was; those who still support the caliphate will be silent for awhile, in an atmosphere where many who did support its goals no longer will, for clan comes first as a tribal priority in societies immersed in their primary culture.

The Jordanian public's demand for its government to restore capital punishment to deal with crimes validates their concerns and values, turning the country away from its slow edge toward Western values and responses to the violence that permeates their society and their place in the world. And Jordan has gone beyond merely executing two of its prisoners who have languished for years on death row.

It dispatched its air force to wreak a far larger punishment on its tormentors as Jordanian fighter jets flew in a victory salute over the hometown of the pilot and over Amman when their mission to attack the Islamic State had been completed in a sortie that left an estimated 55 Islamic State fighters dead. Included among them is said to have been a senior commander familiarly referred to as the "Prince of Nineveh". 

Jordan has demonstrated its credentials as a kingdom that will not allow itself to be violated, its people destroyed.