I’ll never forget the sickening horror that crept into my stomach when Abu Baker al-Baghdadi’s 40,000 ISIS fighters swept through Iraq and Syria and began to slaughter innocent men, women and children in order to establish their blood-thirsty, 7th Century-styled caliphate.
The filmed beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and many others besides; the genocide and enslavement of Yazidis and Syrian Christians; the brutally theatrical burning of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh inside a cage; the torture, rape and murder of Kayla Mueller; the untold severed heads on spikes and crucifixions displayed in the public square of Mosul; homosexuals violently flung down to their deaths from tall buildings and the ripping apart of parents’ bodies between cars as children were forced to look-on.
These were just some of the savagely barbaric acts unleashed upon humans that al-Baghdadi encouraged with his disgusting war against any form of modernity in Syria and the Levant.
How can anyone not be glad that we no longer have to breathe the same planetary air as a subhuman beast like al-Baghdadi?
His death is significant, as is the death of his second in command, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir. This closes the chapter on the ambitions of the ISIS caliphate.
During the peak of its ascendancy, the caliphate ruled from its capital in Raqqa, Syria, over a territory the size of Britain, presiding over 8 million subjugated people with an army of dedicated fighters, which just kept growing in numbers.
Though many fighters are regrettably still alive – and worse, now residing in the West thanks to Europe opening their borders to the “refugee crisis” of 2015 – the terror-group has lost all of its land and its leadership. The Caliph’s prophetic promise of a revived caliphate of Islamic purity for the Arabs has not come true. He was conquered. So much for being the successor of Mohammad (though he certainly channeled Mo’s bestial savagery).
In the wake of Operation Kayla Mueller, President Trump thanked Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Syria and the Kurds for assisting with the daring mission to kill the ISIS leaders. The CIA has been tracking Baghdadi for a month after a tip-off from one of his arrested wives, along with a courier. While the British and French troops were on the ground with the Kurdish and U.S forces, Russia and Turkey provided invaluable air cover.
Far from being estranged from the Kurds, after the president’s so-called betrayal of them, the Syrian Democratic Forces on the ground passed important intelligence to the CIA in order to conduct the raid. A Kurdish informant snuck into Baghdadi’s compound to steal his underwear in order to confirm DNA tests that the headless corpse they recovered did indeed belong to the most wanted terrorist in the world.
The covert mission itself was so impeccably planned and executed that U.S generals are reporting they have never seen anything like it. Secrecy was paramount. Amusingly, Democrats are furious that their president did not share any information with them, yet did with Johnson, Macron, Putin and Erdogan. President Trump stated that he couldn’t trust Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, since they consistently leak information to the leftist media machine, and are also trying to launch yet another impeachment investigation to bring down his presidency. Democrats: Bed. Make. Lie.
Under a heavy bombardment of the usual criticism which he has now become used to, President Trump sought to do things differently in the Middle East, as he promised America he would do during his election campaign. After Kurdish General Mazloum Abdi of the Syrian Democratic Forces thanked him last week for achieving a permanent truce between the Kurds, Turkey and Russia, President Trump said:
“After all of the precious blood and treasure America has poured into the deserts of the Middle East, I am committed to pursuing a different course, one that leads to victory for America.”
More than any other group in the region, the killing of al-Baghdadi effects the Kurds most directly. The U.S aided Kurdish military groups in the fight against ISIS, benefiting the Kurdish people most of all, considering they are the ones who live on the land that ISIS tried to claim for its caliphate. Now President Trump is more or less leaving that overseeing to the Russians – who want the job for their own reasons. Islamic terrorism has been a monumental problem for Putin and Syria is practically on Russia’s doorstep. They also have an already well-established alliance with Syria’s president, al-Assad. Assad detests the U.S for trying to have him overthrown – but that was a different presidency. Trump is not Obama or Bush. Trump will leave Assad well alone unless he uses chemical weapons against civilians again.
So on the very same night when Saturday Night Live was airing an Alec Baldwin impersonation of President Trump “making ISIS great again” and “bringing more jobs back to ISIS,” Trump was in fact embroiled in the Situation Room at the Whitehouse watching in real time the invaluable mission to have ISIS leadership totally decapitated.
The ill-timed irony of SNL’s clown-show is nothing short of delicious! Truth is always so much more interesting than fiction.
Will this remarkable event end the ISIS peril? Of course not. The ideology will not die so long as it’s ingrained in the heads of ultra orthodox Muslims who believe in obeying their Koranic texts and their Hadith. But the death of al-Baghdadi is a significant blow to their barbaric aims fuelled by superstitious fatuity.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities,” as our old friend Voltaire once observed. The backwardness of the Islamic world is a living testament to the truth of that adage.
But for now, we should clink our glasses together in a world-wide toast to celebrate the overdue death of a depraved, malevolent monster who leaves only cruelty, death and misery in his wake. Good riddance.