American Photojournalist James Foley, Kidnapped Thanksgiving 2012 in Syria, Now Beheaded by IS in a Video Warning to America

IS is a slaughterhouse for human beings.

Beheading him wasn't enough; they also compelled him to offer this message to America, before cutting his head off. "John" is Foley's brother, who is an officer in the Air Force.

'I call on my friends family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government. For what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality.

'My message to my beloved parents: save me some dignity and don't accept any (unclear, possibly says media) compensation for my death, from the same people who effectively hit the last nail in my coffin with a recent aerial campaign in Iraq.

'I call on my brother John, who is/was (that part is inaudible) member of the US Air Force, think about what you are doing, think about lives you destroy including those of your own family.

'I call on you John, think about who made the decision to bomb Iraq recently and kill those people, whoever they may have been.

'Think John, who did they really kill? Did they think about me, you our family when they made that decision?

'I died that day John, when your colleagues dropped that bomb on those people -- they signed my death certificate.

'I wish I had more time, I wish I could have the hope of freedom and see my family once again, but that ship has sailed. I guess all in all, I wish I wasn't American.'

And so they cut his head off.

Foley is not the only man they have in captivity:

Then is a chilling warning, the executioner holds another man, on his kness with his hands tied behind his back, by the scruff of the neck. A caption claims it is Steven Joel Soltoff.

The executioner says: 'The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.'

The internet tells me that Steven Joel Soltoff is a journalist who has worked for Time and other outfits.

In previous wars, America has demonized its opponents, claiming they've committed unspeakable atrocities. (It's an odd and disturbing fact that America never accused the Nazis of the Holocaust until after the war had been won, for fear of making it seem like a "War for Jews.")

As far as I know this is the first war where our enemies are so demonic that they proudly walk up to the camera and commit their atrocities as a commercial advertisement.

Even the Nazis exterminated the Jews in relative secret. (Not to claim that Germans didn't know something bad was going on -- just to say that even the Nazis realized such barbarity could not be carried out in the open.)

These people are true psychopaths.

Nevergiveup writes:

Yeah Ace not really. Yes, maybe at the Death Camps but NOT at places like Babi Yar. And not at all the actions in the towns and cities of Poland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and on and on. The local populations KNEW and even participated. They were able to do it our in the open because NO ONE CARED AND THEY WERE ONLY JEWS AFTER ALL!

This is the problem with any Nazi comparison, of course. It seems to suggest that the Nazis were not a singular evil.

I didn't mean to suggest that.

I said the Nazis carried out their industrialized murder in relative secret.

I don't wish to say something "nice" about the Nazis. But I don't think that it can be argued that the Nazis did this openly.

When you're murdering six million people, of course people will know, and many Germans, despite claiming after the war that they knew nothing, of course must have wondered where all their Jewish neighbors had gone.

But even the Nazis, yes, even the Nazis, must have appreciated that the German people would not tolerate it if this barbarity were broadcast around the world.

Apologies for seeming, in the eyes of some, to have spoken up positively about the Nazis.

But I don't think that this point is very disputable: The Nazis had a political cult whose propaganda efforts were centered on Hollywood-style movie-making, and certainly could have made their slaughters public knowledge if they chose to.*

But they didn't. Instead they filmed their torchlight rallies.

At some level, they feared what the world at large would make of such horrors.

These guys don't fear that. They see this sort of thing as a recruitment tool.

I am not attempting to diminish the evil of the Nazis.

However, IS seems to have a different mindset on the publicization of their own atrocities.

* There is a story I've always heard but never read that Hitler had the executions of plotters against him (possibly in the Valkyrie plot, maybe another one) filmed and then used to watch them every night, or every several nights.

I don't know if that story is true or false, but that execution film, if it existed, was not put on YouTube, as per IS' practice.

It's just a different mindset. Both Nazis and IS are psychopathically murderous, but only IS broadcasts proof of its psychopathic murderousness.

posted by Ace at 06:55 PM

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