http://nypost.com/2014/09/02/stop-them-mr-president/Stop them, Mr. President
By Post Editorial Board
September 2, 2014 | 11:56pm
Maybe the news that a second American has been beheaded will force President Obama to recognize he has no more compelling priority today than stopping the Islamic State and its bloodletting.
In its latest barbarity, ISIS aimed to project American weakness to the world. Just before he beheaded Steven Sotloff, the ISIS executioner explained the butchery this way:
I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings. . . So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.
He’s half right. Obama’s policy has contributed to this tragedy, but not because we’ve been too strong.
It’s because US actions have been the worst of both worlds: too weak to eliminate ISIS but strong enough to look as though we are “doing something.” After all, no less than President Obama himself just declared, “We don’t have a strategy yet.”
Wherever ISIS goes, it leaves a trail of human cruelty whose way is marked by the blood of men, women and children who don’t share its twisted brand of Islam. The beheadings of Americans — proudly posted on the Internet — are especially distressing because they are meant to underscore the impotence of the world’s mightiest power to stop them.
It’s too much to expect the Obama administration to admit ISIS is in good part a function of his choices:
his insistence on a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq that owed more to domestic politics than national security; his failure to secure a bases agreement; his dismissal of ISIS as a “junior varsity” threat, and so on.
Or that this is what comes from treating terrorism as a law-enforcement issue.
Instead of using US power to bring home to our enemies that we will exact a high price for molesting Americans, we have the Obama law-enforcement model: Wait until the crime happens, and then hope you can bring the guilty party to federal court.
All around the world, Obama and the United States are mocked.
As a result, the world is a far more dangerous place for innocents, whether they be passengers on a Malaysian civilian jet, schoolgirls in Nigeria, Christians and Yazidis in Iraq, a Marine in a Mexican prison, three Americans in North Korean prisons or — now — two American newsmen who have been beheaded.
The president’s only real option is to step up attacks on ISIS in Iraq, launch new attacks on ISIS targets in Syria and make clear to the world that he will get the jihadists who murdered these American citizens.
And not by arrest and trial: The world needs to see the same justice our Navy SEALs meted out to Osama bin Laden.
