Journalist murders remind America of terrorist threat
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 10, 2014
Militants that intentionally target journalists and take a twisted pleasure in broadcasting their beheadings to the world are the cruelest form of savages. Their attacks on journalists are attacks on humanity and civil society. James Foley and Steven Sotloff's courage in reporting from the gates of hell is the kind of courage we need to combat this threat, whether applied to journalists, diplomats, politicians, or citizens going about their daily lives.
For any society to function properly, it needs to have journalists willing to put themselves on the line, going places where ordinary people wouldn't dare go, and find out what's happening. Foley and Sotloff went to the center of conflicts that were shaping the world in Libya and Syria. It is in part due to their efforts that we know about the weapons that were flowing to Syrian rebels in the aftermath of the Libya War and the extent to which al-Qaeda was getting involved in Syria.
Foley was captured in 2011 by Colonel Gaddafi's forces and held for 44 days. His fellow photo journalist Anton Hammerl was killed. "I believe front line journalism is important; [without it] we can't tell the world how bad it might be," Foley said before he went to Syria.
That kind of attitude should inspire journalists. It inspires me. Of course, most of us won't be able to live up to it -- to risk our lives on the war front to report the truth. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't support the ideal and celebrate those who do embody it. We should still pursue the highest virtues of journalism as far as we can.
At Time magazine's website, Sotloff's article from Sept. 23, 2012 details how Colonel Hamid Bilkhayr, who helped lead the fight against Gaddafi, was kidnapped by Islamist militants and nearly murdered because they said he was "not a Muslim." (He wasn't an extremist.) Now the terrorists of the Islamic State are inflicting genocide on those in Iraq who are literally not Muslims. Nine hundred Yazidis have been murdered so far, and tens of thousands have been forced into the mountains. Yazidi women are being sold into sex slavery. Shabaks, Assyrians, and Christians are also being targeted.
Sotloff himself was the grandson of Holocaust survivors. After the Holocaust, the world said, "Never again." ISIS is recreating the horrors of genocide. Today, thirteen years after 9/11, we owe it to ourselves and those who came before us to stop them before they get much further.
Mitchell Blatt is the producer of ChinaTravelWriter.com and an editor at a map magazine in Nanjing.
Opinion articles reflect the author's own opinion, not necessarily that of China.org.cn.
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