Barbarity

The burning alive of Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, a Jordanian air-force pilot, and its gruesome video publication by ISIS, have evoked outrage throughout the world.

There seems to be no level of barbarity & depravity which ISIS is unwilling to indulge in.

A unique aspect of ISIS' amorality is the fact that they self-publicise their heinous crimes.

Regimes around the world have resorted to enormous inhumanity and vast cruelty to their own populations, and even more so to their enemies.

However, these depraved excesses have been hidden by the perpetrators.

The Soviet Gulags; the North Korean Camps; the Cambodian killing fields; the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis by Hutu militia in Rwanda....and of course the Nazis extermination camps, were kept out of sight of the general public.

Even the most barbaric forces of the past century have had some minimal moral understanding to appreciate that their crimes were shameful and, at a least, that publicity would damage their greater cause.

It is true that other Islamist terrorists, such as Al Kaida, Hamas and Hezbollah claim responsibility for bloody terror attacks; it is also true they execute people casually & routinely. However, they have not seen fit to overly expose the gore itself to a wide audience.

ISIS on the other hand employs teams of videographers and professional editors to record their sins, as cinematic productions, and then distribute these stomach churning videos at the speeds of light around the world.

The orange clad victims; the executioner, the sliding knife, the severed head.

Or, in al-Kasaersbeh's case, en-caged and killed in the murderous flames.

While this tactic surely engenders fear, and even attracts recruits, currently estimated at 1000 per month, it also has the effect of uniting everyone less barbaric than ISIS in warfare against them.