Steven Sotloff: Reaction Around the Web

ISIL takes another one.

This just depresses me no end.

This should not have happened.

They've got more hostages so you can expect this sort of thing from now on -- at least until we get a president with the cajones to do something about it.

And 9/11 is coming.

Reaction around the web:

Aaron Goldstein:

There's not much I can say at this moment other than to ask a single question. How many more Americans does ISIS have to behead before President Obama develops a strategy on ISIS? 

Independent Journal Review:

As ISIS still has Americans in its blood-stained hands and are willing to butcher more innocents in the name of its perverted cause, the world can no longer turn a blind eye. Whether or not the Commander-in-Chief leaves these terrorists alone, it is high time to form a strategy to defeat them.

Andrew Rosenthal:

Clearly, ISIS intends to go on kidnapping and murdering people and displaying the bloodshed to the world, and the United States is going to have to take an active, leadership role in the civilized world’s response. 

 The Twitchy Team:

Following reports that American journalist Steven Sotloff was beheaded by ISIS, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki held a press conference … and promptly confirmed that the Obama administration is made up of spineless clowns:

Sister Toldjah:

At the end of the video of Sotloff’s beheading, ISIS shows another captive, Briton David Cawthorne Haines. The implication is clear: unless the US stops its airstrikes, Mr. Haines will be slaughtered like James Foley and Mr. Sotloff.

Fox News:

Congressional lawmakers urged the Obama administration to crank up the offensive against the Islamic State after another video surfaced purporting to show the graphic execution of an American journalist.

CNN:

On Friday, Obama said it was too soon to discuss what steps the U.S. would take against the militant group inside Syria. On how to deal with the group in Syria -- where it was born and has a haven, mostly in the city of Raqqa -- the President said: "We don't have a strategy yet."

It's all terrible.

And so while Obama figures out his "strategy," presumably on the golf course, other hostages wait their turn.

Would this be an inappropriate time to ask, "What would Reagan do?"  Because, I mean, I can't see Ronald Reagan, or even George W. Bush for that matter, picking up his clubs and going to the green.  That's what Obama did after the Foley murder, so why would this be different?

This is coming to America next, people.  It's here.  The time to develop a strategy is long overdue.

The jihadists are just taunting us now; it's a shame we don't have a leader up to the task.


Added:

Allahpundit:

Serious question: How many dead Americans does it take to create a casus belli against a terrorist group? Certainly no more than 3,000, per 9/11. Hezbollah killed many more Marines in the 1983 barracks bombing than ISIS has killed journalists, although I suppose you can draw a distinction there between acts of war between military (or paramilitary) forces and outright murder of civilian combatants. Then again, the murder of Daniel Pearl wouldn’t have triggered an AUMF against Al Qaeda had 9/11 not preceded it. If a new AUMF is coming against ISIS, it’ll be because of the strategic terrorist threat the group poses to Americans domestically, not because of what it did to Sotloff and James Foley — although those murders, being so barbaric, will do wonders to build American resolve in smashing these degenerates to pieces.

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