In early August, US president Barack Obama authorized airstrikes targeted at artillery used by the Islamic State extremist group against Kurdish forces defending Irbil, Iraq’s Kurdish regional capital. The Pentagon explained this decision by claiming the artillery was “near US personnel.”
Fast forward nearly two weeks and kidnapped American journalist, James Foley, is gruesomely beheaded by an ISIS militant on video that has made its way through the Internet for everyone to see.
This barbaric and tragic execution isn’t left unexplained, though. The killer explicitly explains why he took the actions he did. And no, it isn’t because he hates our freedom. It’s not because American women run around wearing bikinis. It isn’t because the US has access to computers, phones, TVs and other miracles of modern technology. It isn’t because the majority of Americans are Christian. The reason for Foley’s death can be explained in one word: Blowback.
In the video, the militant said that other American journalists will also die if the U.S. doesn’t cease its airstrikes in Iraq. In fact, at the end of the video, a militant shows a second man, identified as Steven Sotloff, another American journalist, warning that he could be the next captive killed.
Here it is, in plain view and even re-watchable — the consequences of interventionism. An innocent human being murdered in cold blood directly in response to American airstrikes that the president authorized. And more human beings are in known mortal danger if the president doesn’t alter his interventionist foreign policy.
Never before has the phrase “thanks, Obama” been more accurate.
So what does our Nobel Peace Prize winning, progressive commander-in-chief do? Immediately following the tragic execution of Foley, Obama told the press that the United States would be “relentless” against Islamic State militants … and ordered 14 more airstrikes!
Yes, you read that right. A terrorist murdered an American because of airstrikes, threatened to do it again if the airstrikes don’t stop, and the United States military said, “whatever, let’s just bomb them some more,” with an A-OK from the president.
You can’t make American foreign policy up. It’s almost like a dream sequence where the people in positions of authority become increasingly stupid and evil. But that’s actually just real life.
Of course this blowback comes as no surprise to the anti-war movement — and I mean the real anti-war movement, not the partisan hacks and fools who were against invading Iraq under Bush but are now cheering on “humanitarian intervention” (aka bombing with enough media support) under Obama.
The anti-war crowd, unlike the people actually in charge of foreign policy, understands and has predicted the effects of intervention. Overseas meddling never works out. And for central planners in Washington to think they can manipulate and coordinate other country’s affairs from millions of miles away, one has to question either their intelligence or their character.
The airstrikes ought to be ended as quickly as possible and whatever US personnel are near the Kurdish regional capital need to be immediately removed from the region. There is no good reason for them to be there in the first place. It not only puts lives in danger, it serves as an excuse for further bombing and even more meddling.
Even more ideally, the US military would be abolished all together. Then the platform from which psychopathic Nobel Prize winners gain power and murder people with no accountability will be gone.
How many more James Foleys before the United States realizes it can’t continue its interventionism? How many more dead human beings until Obama’s bloodlust is satisfied?
