It's actually there way of flipping us the bird because they can't win a conventional War against us. If it is their strategy to piss off the west well then they have succeeded. Now arms are flowing from Western powers to the Kurds and smart munitions are falling on the heads of ISIL.
If their strategy was to get us to kill their buddies then it worked. Their buddies are dying via tactical strikes as a result of their BS. Not specifically on just Foley but the other incidents as well.
I don't mind some munitions falling on these vermin.
Problem I have is the rhetoric isn't unique to ISIS, it's the exact same stuff we hear about every enemy right before the war begins. They're this big terrible threat who're gonna come here and blow up middle America, nuke our cities, yada yada. I don't doubt there are badguys with guns running around in Iraq, I just question how dire it actually is.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. But where are we when we've let ourselves be fooled, manipulated, and suckered into supporting wars we can't possibly win half a dozen times?
We can't win a war of terrorism. There are no cities to capture, land to occupy, ports to level, or anything else. It's like the Israeli operation in Gaza. They're not at war with Gaza, they're at war with a bunch of people running around amongst Gazan residents. That's a tough enemy to kill. And doing so means killing non-combatants in the process. As in Iraq. And once we get serious about an air campaign trying in vain to do something about it, we're gonna get the same grief the world gives Israel but our body count is gonna be a helluva lot higher than their's.
If we're gonna wage war we need to ask ourselves what we're hoping to accomplish. "To make everythig perfect forever" is not a legitimate military goal.