Bombings And Beheadings Are Equally Barbaric

Picasso's "Guernica", in response to the first aerial bombings, 1937

"Do not repay evil with evil."

Jesus  

All of us were sickened recently to learn about videos of enemies so evil as to decapitate two people in an act of revenge for U.S. bombings in Iraq.

One U.S. response has been to launch yet more air attacks against ISIS (or ISIL) in return for these and other acts of genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shiah Muslims in Iraq. Violence, as always, just keeps on engendering more and ever worse violence. 

Take aerial bombing, for example.

Victims taking a direct hit are instantly obliterated into unrecognizable bits of bone, blood, brains and other body parts, though not subject to prolonged suffering. Others experience sure and unimaginably agonizing deaths from untreatable burns and other wounds. Still others may survive but be left with injuries from which they will never recover, suffer severe lacerations and loss of limbs, and endure lifelong psychological traumas

Which act of terrorism should we consider worse, when each is unspeakably despicable? 

Sadly, drone and aerial strikes have become accepted as antiseptic and routine, the equivalent of just another hit in a video game, although nothing could be further from reality.

One reality being that one day all perpetrators of any acts of barbaric brutality will surely have to give an account.