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ISIS is cancer that must be cut out

by The Daily Inter Lake
| February 4, 2015 8:22 PM

The savage brutality exhibited by the Islamic State reached a new low this week when the terrorist group released video of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive while trapped inside a cage.

To Western sensibilities, it is impossible to imagine how ISIS thinks it will attract support by filming and distributing snuff films that show the execution of their helpless, innocent captives.

But ISIS is not worried about Western sensibilities. They want to evoke terror in Americans and Europeans, and they want to inspire their fellow Muslims to believe that the infidels (that’s you and us) can be vanquished and that Islam can conquer the world. It is no mistake that as the flames envelop and incinerate the terrified prisoner, a chant of “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) is heard on the soundtrack of the nauseating video.

Nor is anyone safe from this threat. Islamist ideology demands total adherence to its brand of fundamentalism. Those who do not submit are subjected to beheadings, crucifixion, slavery, sexual abuse, and now being burned alive. Recently a reportedly gay man was thrown to his death from a high building — all in the name of Allah.

Yet it is just possible that the low point represented by the gruesome death of Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh will also be a turning point in how public opinion in the Muslim world responds to extremists. Jordan’s King Abdullah II has vowed revenge against the Islamic State and immediately made good on that promise by quickly executing two al-Qaida prisoners. Abdullah said Jordan will not give up the fight until his military “runs out of fuel and bullets.” According to Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., Abdullah said “there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen.”

Let’s hope so. Enough hand-wringing. Maybe it is time for the U.S. to “lead from behind again” and let Jordan do what has to be done while we dither and vacillate and hold summits on “violent extremism,” as the White House is doing later this month.

Rep. Ryan Zinke, Montana’s newest congressman and a former Navy SEAL, met with Abdullah Tuesday in Washington, D.C., and praised the king for his absolute determination to crush ISIS, but he isn’t ready to give up on an American role in cutting out the cancer that ISIS has become.

“The king of Jordan needs the Obama administration to take this threat seriously and the Jordanian people need our help. Even the king of Jordan realizes this is as much of an Islamic civil war as it is a war against the West, yet the president refuses to use the words Islamic terrorism,” Zinke told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday.

Zinke said he would confront the president and Cabinet directly with the need to change U.S. policy in a meeting scheduled for Wednesday night. We hope he did so, and we hope moreover that President Obama will listen to the military advice of a proven battlefield patriot.

No one wants another long drawn-out war in Iraq, but wiping out ISIS doesn’t require a nation-building operation such as George Bush foolheartedly attempted in Iraq. Remember, we vanquished the Iraqi army quickly; it was the attempt to build a Western-style democracy that proved our downfall.

The rule in foreign interventions should be simple: Get in, get it done, and get out. Then move on to the next threat and deal with it. That’s the proper use of American power in a world gone crazy, and if we pretend that someone else will take care of the problems we face, then we are another kind of fool altogether.