Tantalizing Torment
"The military forces announce that the hero pilot, Muath al-Kaseasbeh, has fallen as a martyr, and ask God to accept him with the martyrs."
"While the military forces mourn the martyr, they emphasize his blood will not be shed in vain. Our punishment and revenge will be as huge as the loss of the Jordanians."
General Mamdouh al-Ameri, Jordaniuan military spokesman
This still image made from video released by Islamic State group militants and posted on the website of the SITE Intelligence Group on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015, purportedly shows Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh standing in a cage just before being burned to death by his captors. (AP Photo/SITE Intelligence Group)
"The sentence of death pending on Iraqi Sajida al-Rishawi will be carried out at dawn."Jordan's King Abdullah found himself in a very hard place indeed. He and his military advisers had intelligence that the Jordanian airforce pilot had long since been killed, and the method by which his death was achieved, a chillingly horrible one, recalling a time when people were burned at the stake for purported religious blasphemy or as witches by a medieval-minded society was particularly and deliberately gruesome.
Jordanian security officer
His death simply put was a convenient way to demonstrate to the civilian population in Raqqa where Islamic State has their headquarters, what lies in wait for them as well, should they become restless, resentful and restively active against ISIS rule. The death-by-immolation video was originally meant to be viewed again and again by Syrians and Iraqis living under Islamic State rule, as a caution against resistance.
One can only suppose that the great minds at Islamic State headquarters didn't quite think through how the pilot in a live state, might be useful to them in the future. Their demand that Sajida al-Rishawi, the failed female suicide bomber, be released might have been effective had they retained a live Lt. Moaz Kasaesbeh with whom to effect the transfer, and thrown in Japanese journalist Kenji Goto for good measure.
The negotiations that took place, purportedly offering hope to the Japanese and the Jordanians that their captive nationals might yet be saved with the release of the very well-connected Sajida al-Rishawi was a signal demonstration of the vicious pathology of the Islamic State negotiators in prolonging the agony of those anxious to restore their captured nations to freedom.
It should put to rest the fantasy that such inspired slaughterers have the merest vestige of humanity within their black souls, and that reason can be employed in negotiating with them; that they might be open and amenable to anything outside mayhem, murder, rape, enslavement; terrorism in its most blatant forms of punitive oppression and aggressive empowerment.
Labels: Atrocities, Islamic State, Jordan
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 04, 2015
<< Home