Obama Condemns US Journalist's Beheading
by Luis Ramirez August 20, 2014
President Barack Obama on Wednesday condemned the Islamic State militant group that beheaded an American journalist as a spreading 'cancer' that must be eradicated.
'The entire world is appalled by the brutal murder of James Foley,' Obama said, speaking a day after the militants released a video of his execution. He also vowed the United States 'will continue to do what we must do to protect our people.'
Earlier in the day, U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the authenticity of the grisly video, which shows the freelance journalist being put to death. It also showed a second hostage American journalist, Steven Joel Sotloff, and included militants' threats to kill him.
The Sunni extremist group, in releasing the video, claimed it had killed Foley in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes targeting the group's fighters in northern Iraq. The strikes, which began Aug. 8, helped rescue thousands of Yazidi refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq and helped Iraqis regain control of the country's main dam, near Mosul. In the hours after the video's release, the U.S. said it carried out nearly a dozen more airstrikes against Islamic State fighters near the dam.
The 40-year-old Foley disappeared November 22, 2012, after being abducted in Syria by unidentified gunmen. He had reported in the Middle East for five years, for organizations including the GlobalPost, and previously had spent six weeks in captivity in Libya.
It was not clear as of Wednesday where the execution took place.
Obama, in a brief televised appearance from the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard, said he had telephoned Foley's family members in New Hampshire to say 'we are all heartbroken at their loss.'
Foley, Obama said, 'reported from difficult and dangerous places, bearing witness' in his news accounts from the Middle East. That included reporting on the suffering of Syrians during their country's civil war.
The Islamic State militants, Obama said, 'have rampaged' across swaths of Syria and Iraq. 'They abduct women and children and subject them to rape and torture and slavery.'
'Bankrupt' ideology
The fighters have murdered people of all faiths, including Muslims. 'ISIL speaks for no religion,' he said, using a common acronym for the group. Its 'ideology is bankrupt.'
Obama called for 'a common effort' – in Iraq, the Middle East region and the broader international community – 'to extract this cancer so it does not spread.'
French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday told Le Monde newspaper there should be an international conference and 'global strategy' to address the Islamic extremist group, which he called well-structured, well-financed and well-armed with sophisticated weapons.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Foley's killing in the 'strongest terms,' describing it as 'an abominable crime.'
Foley's killing has drawn a sharp response in Britain, where counter-terrorism police are trying to identify the photojournalist's killer. In the video, he spoke with a British accent.
U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the beheading 'adds to the appalling parade of horrors' perpetrated by the Islamic state group. He called it a 'monstrous group that glories in death.'
Family pays tribute
Foley's family was among those paying tribute to the journalist's courage in the face of dangerous assignments.
'He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people,' said a Facebook statement attributed to his mother Diane on Tuesday.
The Foley family's statement implored the kidnappers to spare the lives of other hostages, including Sotloff: 'Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world.''
The Islamic State group holds several more hostages, including three American nationals and at least two British nationals, as well as others, according to the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at Kings College London.
'Message to America'
In a video posted by the Islamic State titled 'Message to America,' Foley is shown wearing an orange outfit and kneeling in the desert as a masked man in black standing beside him holds a knife. Foley calls on his friends and loved ones to rise up against the U.S. government.
"My message to my beloved parents: Save me some dignity and don't accept any meager compensation for my death from the same people who effectively hit the last nail in my coffin with their recent aerial campaign in Iraq,' he says.
The masked man in black denounces the U.S. government for being 'at the forefront of aggression toward the Islamic State.'
'You have plotted against us and gone far out of your way to find reasons to interfere in our affairs,' he says. 'Today, your military air force is attacking us daily. In Iraq, your strikes have caused casualties amongst Muslims. You are no longer fighting an insurgency. We are an Islamic army and state that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims from all walks of life, who have accepted the caliphate as their leadership.'
Sotloff appears near the end of the nearly five-minute video. It is then suggested that his fate rests with Obama.
More reaction on Foley
'This is an absolutely tragic and senseless killing of an innocent man who was just doing his job,' Voice of America Director David Ensor said. 'It isn't going to make any difference. It won't affect U.S. policy in my view, it isn't going to make American journalist organizations stop covering the news.'
Ensor said IS and anyone else who is holding innocent prisoners – journalists or others – should free them immediately. 'They will gain nothing from taking another innocent life,' he said.
Ensor said VOA constantly assesses the risks its journalists face while covering different news stories.
'We have a lot of respect for our journalists and their judgment,' he said, adding that risks are inevitable and 'unfortunately the world is a dangerous place.'
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Foley's execution, saying the 'barbaric' murder sickens all decent people. It said Syria has become the most dangerous country in the world for journalists for the past two years, with at least 69 other journalists having been killed, more than 80 kidnapped and 20 others currently missing.
Marquette University, where Foley graduated in 1996, issued a statement saying was 'deeply saddened' by Foley's death. It said the history major 'had a heart for social justice and used his immense talents to tell the difficult stories in the hopes that they might make a difference in the world.'
Foley, who had also been briefly held by forces loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi during the 2011 uprising, had worked for AFP and the Boston-based online media outlet GlobalPost. His last dispatch from Syria for GlobalPost detailed the growing frustration with the war in Syria among Aleppo's population.
Jonathan Adelman, associate professor at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies, said the execution is a response by IS to its recent setbacks on the battlefield.
'To say that 'OK, we're not even going to concede that we can ever lose because we're, quote, infallible, but we're now going to go to the heart of the beast, we're going to go straight at the president of the United States and say do you want us to slaughter this person?' And, it is incredibly appalling in the 21st century that any nation, any people, would act like this," said Adelman.
Adelman said such brutality and battlefield setbacks may prove to be the undoing of the IS militants as other Sunni militant groups pull their support away.
IS holds more hostages
The Committee to Protect Journalists says approximately 20 local and international journalists still are missing in Syria, and many are believed to be held by militants.
'Syria is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists,' Courtney Radsch, CPJ advocacy director, told VOA Wednesday. 'It's an incredibly important conflict that they are literally risking their lives for.'
'Anytime that non-state actors are kidnapping journalists and using them as pawns in a broader geopolitical game, that's incredibly dangerous,' Radsch said. 'Journalists are there as innocent, objective bystanders. They are seeking to report on what's happening so that the world can know,' she said.
Freelance journalists covering conflicts like that in Syria often work with little protection or resources.
'I think news organization should make sure they are doing as much as they can to keep their journalists safe, whether or not they are staff or freelancers,' said Radsch. 'I think it's important that news organizations are paying the right wage so that we encourage freelancers to do the training, to get the security, take the precautions that are needed.'
Shiraz Maher, who's at the Kings College center, agrees that the Islamic State 'clearly holds a number of Westerners, [and] holds other people from other European countries.
'It's not just journalists, it's aid workers that they've captured. So it does have a number of people in this pool that they may use in the future.'
Maher said foreign and especially British jihadists fighting for the Islamic State have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities.
'Earlier this year, British foreign fighters were involved with the execution of prisoners of war, members of the Syrian army that they had captured. At the end of last year, we had British suicide bombers in Aleppo.'
Analysts say the Islamic State's gruesome response to U.S. airstrikes in Iraq is evidence that the U.S. intervention is hurting the militants.
VOA's Henry Ridgwell contributed to this report from London, with Victor Beattie and Sharon Behn from Washington. Additional information was provided by Reuters.
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