This story absolutely, positively knocks me out.
Major Mariam Al Mansouri has flown a combat mission striking Islamic State targets in Syria.
Al Mansouri is a major in the United Arab Emirates air force.
The major is a woman!
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/world/meast/uae-female-fighter-pilot/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
Al Mansouri might be, in the words of CNN.com, the Islamic State’s “worst nightmare.”
The Islamic State — aka ISIS or ISIL — is at this moment the world’s No. 1 terrorist organization. It is a Sunni extremist cult that beheads prisoners and brutalizes women, denying them any semblance of respect.
These terrorists are animals. President Obama has declared his intention to “degrade and destroy” the terrorist organization.
Accordingly, he and Secretary of State John Kerry have enlisted several nations to join in a coalition to fight ISIL/ISIS. The United Arab Emirates is one of them. Among the service personnel ordered to fly combat sorties against the Islamic State is the aforementioned Major Al Mansouri.
“She is (a) fully qualified, highly trained, combat ready pilot, and she led the mission,” Yousef Al Otaiba told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” according to CNN.com.
This is fantastic. A female UAE air force officer has led a combat mission to destroy military targets manned and operated by sworn enemies of women all around the world.
The delicious irony is way beyond measure.
john, I am currently listening as I was walking around my neighborhood to the book, No God but God by the Muslim scholar, Razar Asilan. In it he notes that the Koran only mandates defensive war and never to take the initiative to attack. If this is correct, then the beheadings were probably efforts by Isil to get the US to attack so that Isil could claim Koranic legitimacy of defensive war. You might enjoy Razar’s views on all this. Jim B
I am far from a Muslim scholar, so I’ll leave that interpretation of the Quran to the likes of Professor Aslan. Your own assumption of what prompted the beheadings sounds plausible. I am no longer going to refer to ISIL/ISIS as an Islamist extremist group, but rather I will call them a “cult.”