1939
2015-02-06 - by
Robed in black from head to toe, a hood covering his face, with a hostage kneeling at his feet, he lifted a knife and started his litany.
Know, oh Obama, he said, that we will cut off your head in the White House.
He wasn’t done.
This is my message to France and Belgium… we will come to you with car bombs and explosive charges, and will cut off your heads.
He also had a message for the leader of the Kurds.
As for you, oh Masoud, you dog, we are going to behead you and throw you into the trash bin of history.
And, finally, he said a Japanese journalist he held hostage had less than “24 hours to live” – unless a ransom was paid.
It was like watching Genghis Khan on the Internet.
And it was like going back to 1939 – we looked across the water and saw plain as day a devil but told ourselves he wasn’t our problem – that we didn’t have to fight, that it was the British and French he was after so it was up to them to defeat him and send him back to the desert places.
But it wasn’t to be.
It was us he was after.
1939
2015-02-06/
Robed in black from head to toe, a hood covering his face, with a hostage kneeling at his feet, he lifted a knife and started his litany.
Know, oh Obama, he said, that we will cut off your head in the White House.
He wasn’t done.
This is my message to France and Belgium… we will come to you with car bombs and explosive charges, and will cut off your heads.
He also had a message for the leader of the Kurds.
As for you, oh Masoud, you dog, we are going to behead you and throw you into the trash bin of history.
And, finally, he said a Japanese journalist he held hostage had less than “24 hours to live” – unless a ransom was paid.
It was like watching Genghis Khan on the Internet.
And it was like going back to 1939 – we looked across the water and saw plain as day a devil but told ourselves he wasn’t our problem – that we didn’t have to fight, that it was the British and French he was after so it was up to them to defeat him and send him back to the desert places.
But it wasn’t to be.
It was us he was after.