ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior.
— President Barack Obama, speaking yesterday at The Edgartown School, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, following the terrorists’ release of a video showing the beheading of journalist James Foley, who Obama lauded as a courageous reporter.