News of a second U.S. journalist falling victim to Islamist extremists Tuesday brought waves of anger and sadness. CIVILIANS, human rights workers and journalists working abroad all are easy targets for guerilla movements. So yes, there likely will be more similarly tragic acts to come.
Terrorists associated with ISIS said the barbaric beheading of Steven J. Sotloff, 31, was in retaliation to the recent U.S. bombings of militant targets in northern Iraq.
As tragic as the act was, the United States should not stop taking the fight to the terrorists. Nor should the killing spur a more aggressive U.S. involvement in the Mideast.
ISIS, in fact, is doing a dandy job in raising the world’s ire, and disgust, against the sub-state. Never before has a movement managed to unite such separate factions — Muslims, Jews and Christians — in concert against it.
Brutality, however, should not be construed as capability.
Yes, ISIS is great with social media. It’s counting on clicks to view the gruesome act as a measure of its worldwide support.
But as a fighting unit, the Islamists are a disaster with no evident strategy other than to ravage everything in their way.
They are truly horrific.
Part of the ISIS campaign is ethnic cleansing against non-Muslims. Men and boys are slaughtered wholesale while women and children are abducted and used as rewards for the terrorists.
In one report to Amnesty International, up to 90 civilians were shot in the back after being separated from their wives and children and made to kneel before their killers.
The human rights organization says thousands of civilians have been slain in this manner across Syria and now in Iraq.
The atrocities only serve to steel us in our steadfastness not to deal with such barbarians and to have faith that pressure from across the world will weigh so heavily against ISIS that it will be crushed.
— Susan Lynn
US response to another atrocity should be measured
