"The First Quality of a Warrior": ISIS - Politics or Battle Porn?

Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker: "It’s hard to watch the video of Steven Sotloff’s last moments and not conclude something similar: the ostensible objective of securing an Islamic state is nowhere near as important as killing people. For the guys who signed up for ISIS—including, especially, the masked man with the English accent who wielded the knife—killing is the real point of being there. Last month, when ISIS forces overran a Syrian Army base in the city of Raqqa, they beheaded dozens of soldiers and displayed their trophies on bloody spikes. “Here are heads that have ripened, that were ready for the plucking,” an ISIS fighter said in narration. Two soldiers were crucified. This sounds less like a battle than like some kind of macabre party.

In a lesser-known aphorism from Clausewitz, he says, “Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.” The executioner in the Sotloff video, as in the video that captured the beheading of the journalist James Foley, is wearing a mask. Is it the mark of a warrior? Or is it the mark of a murderer who knows, deep in his soul, that he should be ashamed?"

Full article here