President
Barack Obama said a video showing the beheading of a second American
journalist by Islamic State underscores the need for a global alliance
to confront the extremist group.
President Barack Obama
said a video showing the beheading of a second American journalist by
Islamic State underscores the need for a global alliance to confront the
extremist group.
The recording posted online yesterday shows
the execution of captured freelance journalist Steven Joel Sotloff by
the militant Sunni group that controls a swath of eastern Syria and
northern Iraq. Journalist James Foley was beheaded in a video released
last month.
“It’s not only that we’re going to be bringing to
justice those that perpetrated this terrible crime against these fine
young men,” Obama said today during a visit to Tallinn, Estonia. “The
United States will continue to lead a regional and international effort
against the barbaric” and “empty” vision of Islamic State, he said.
In
the latest video, a masked fighter says, “I’m back, Obama. I’m back
because of your arrogant foreign policy toward the Islamic State,
because of your insistence on continuing your bombings.”
The
recording, which Obama’s administration judged authentic, ends with
another prisoner kneeling in an orange jumpsuit -- just as Sotloff was
shown at the end of the recording on Foley’s killing. The captive in the
new video is identified as David Cawthorne Haines, a British citizen.
Photographer: Etienne de Malglaive via Getty Images
In this handout image made available by the photographer, American journalist Steven... Read More
U.S. lawmakers responded to the new video by urging Obama to
step up his efforts to forge a coalition of nations to take on Islamic
State. Some of them called for him to increase the limited U.S.
airstrikes over Iraq and expand them into neighboring Syria.
‘Unprecedented’ Cooperation
“There
is a growing awareness internationally that we have to form an
unprecedented international program of cooperation,” Representative Ed
Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on a conference call with reporters yesterday.
Some
Obama administration officials have said they and Obama are wary of
expanding the direct U.S. military role. Doing so risks assisting the
extremists’ efforts to portray the conflict as part of a centuries-old
war against Islam by Christian crusaders and Jews, according to six
officials who asked for anonymity to discuss internal policy
deliberations.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, calling
Sotloff’s murder “despicable and barbaric,” said yesterday that Islamic
State terrorists “speak for no religion. They threaten Syrians, Iraqis,
American and British people alike and make no distinction between
Muslims, Christians or any other faith.”
Source: AP
This image made from video posted on the Internet by Islamic State militants and... Read More
Sending Kerry
Obama has said he is sending
administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, to
the Mideast to seek support from countries in the region.
In Tallinn, Obama said U.S. airstrikes have halted Islamic State advances in Iraq,
while acknowledging that it will take time to “degrade and destroy” the
militant movement. “This is not going to be a one-week or one-month or
six-month proposition,” he said.
American intelligence agencies
analyzed the new video and “reached the judgment that it is authentic,”
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security
Council, said today in an e-mailed statement.
An international
effort is required in part because “most of the suicide bombers and most
of the most aggressive fighters” of Islamic State are “foreign
fighters” that “come from all over the world,” Brett McGurk, the deputy
assistant U.S. secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, said yesterday in an interview on CNN.
Masked Executioner
The
masked executioner on the video, released by the SITE intelligence
group, which tracks jihadist activity, appears to be the same U.K.
citizen who was seen in the video of Foley’s beheading.
“We take
this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this evil
alliance of America against the Islamic State to back off and leave our
people alone,” the man in black says as he stands over Haines.
A
U.S. official said Islamic State’s decision to release the video just
as Americans returned to work after the Labor Day three-day weekend
suggests its relative political sophistication and underscores that it
has fighters from Western Europe and the U.S. who are familiar with work
routines.
The official said that given Islamic State’s
political acumen, the group probably doesn’t expect the murders of Foley
and Sotloff and the threat against Haines to change U.S. or U.K.
policy, and that the videos are partially intended to terrorize
residents and leaders of Syria, Iraq and other predominantly Muslim nations that the group seeks to incorporate in its proclaimed caliphate.
Sotloff’s Work
Sotloff,
who was from Miami, worked as a journalist in Libya and spoke fluent
Arabic, according to a former colleague. He was kidnapped near Aleppo,
Syria, on Aug. 4, 2013. He had reported for publications including Time
magazine and the Christian Science Monitor.
“Being butchered in
front of a camera simply for being a reporter is pure barbarism,” Joel
Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists, said in a statement.
The murders of Sotloff and Foley, 40, “are war crimes, and those who
committed them must be brought to justice swiftly,” he said.
Sotloff’s
relatives are “aware of the video and awaiting authentication,” Barak
Barfi, a spokesman for the family, said in an e-mailed statement before
the U.S. released its analysis of the recorded killing. “They are
grieving privately.”
Nancy Gibbs, Time’s editor, said in a
statement on the magazine’s website that Sotloff “gave his life so
readers would have access to information from some of the most dangerous
places in the world.”
Congress’s Role
While Obama has
authorized limited airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq for
humanitarian purposes and to protect U.S. personnel, he said last week
that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to extend the fight into Syria. The
U.S. backs what it calls moderate rebels seeking to overthrow Syria’s
President Bashar al-Assad, even as Islamic State has made greater
headway against Assad’s forces.
Obama said today the reference was to the possibility of military action in Syria that “might require congressional approval.”
“It
is very important to me that when we send our pilots in to do a job
that we know this is a mission that’s going to work” and that it has
support, he said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina
Republican who serves on the Armed Services Committee, said in an
e-mailed statement yesterday that American airpower, employed “in
coordination with reliable partners on the ground,” should be
“aggressively pursued both in Syria and Iraq.”
Legislation Sought
Senator
Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who’s also on the Armed Services panel,
said he will introduce legislation leaving “no doubt” that Obama has
authority to order airstrikes in Syria.
Royce said he will call
Kerry before the Foreign Affairs committee this month to testify on
efforts at “rolling back” Islamic State’s gains.
Royce and
Representative Eliot Engel of New York, the committee’s top Democrat,
told reporters they expect Congress to vote on airstrikes in Iraq and
possibly Syria.
“We anticipate that there would be a vote for authorization,” Royce said.
Some Democrats have joined Republicans in faulting Obama for failing to act more aggressively.
“I’ve
learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious
-- maybe in this instance too cautious,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, the
California Democrat who heads the intelligence committee, said Aug. 31
on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
To contact the reporters on this story: David Lerman in Washington at dlerman1@bloomberg.net; Angela Greiling Keane in Tallin, Estonia at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Larry Liebert, Mark McQuillan
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