Wake up, America — the war has hit home

By Benny Avni

August 20, 2014

Will the videotaped execution of James Foley shock America out of our dangerous flirtation with isolationism?

The gruesome beheading of the 40-year-old photojournalist should scream out a warning to any who still doubt: This isn’t just some war out there. It’s about us.

Some see Foley as a noble but careless man, too courageous for his own good, who unwisely decided to go freelance in faraway war zones, armed with nothing more than a camera and adrenaline.

Kidnapped once, in Libya, Foley still went back to war journalism in Syria — where he was abducted again in November 2012 by forces close to President Bashar al-Assad, who later, apparently, traded him to supposedly anti-Assad jihadis.

In fact, Foley represented today’s purest form of journalism, telling all of us about battle-torn lands. He was the man up front, dedicated to bringing the sounds, sights and smell of war to your favorite couch. Mostly, Foley was an American. One of us.

A Granite Stater in a Gitmo-like orange jumpsuit, he was forced to spew a statement blaming President Obama for his coming beheading, and telling his brother John, “I died” the day John’s US Air Force colleagues attacked the Islamic State from the air in Iraq.

Yet the man who killed him was also, in a way, one of us. Black-clad, his face fully covered, short knife in hand, the killer read out his own statement, amplifying the text force-fed to Foley, and threatening to kill another captive reporter, Steven Joel Sotloff, next — then other hostages.

Yet the killer had an English accent that Britain’s modern-day Henry Higginses have pinpointed to south London. Not quite an American, but still a Westerner.

Yes, the Islamic State caliphate is being built over there in the Middle East, not in our Midwest.

But the jihadis won’t stay there.

The “extremists” are growing ever more extreme. The Islamic State is more cruel, more fanatical and more brutal than al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Volunteers from all over the world are pouring into Syria and Iraq, encouraged by the Islamic State’s victories to think the dream of an Islamic caliphate is about to come true. First, conquer the region — then the world.

Among them are thousands of Westerners, just like that Londoner, including dozens of Americans. And the Islamic State bigwigs prize these guys for their value in the next battle — the “world” one.

Sooner or later, some of these Western jihadis will return to the land of their birth, perhaps after shaving beards or shedding head scarves.

Like Foley, they’ll be armed with adrenaline — but instead of a camera, they’ll wear an explosive belt, or some more effective, less visible device designed to kill as many Americans as possible.

Since even before Obama took office, experts, pundits and pollsters have told us the American people are tired of war. We no longer suffer from the illusion that the United States can change the world for the better; time to withdraw.

For six years, the president used his bully pulpit to placate America’s understandable aversion to war.

He told us that he’s the one who “ends” wars, not engages in new ones.

Oops: The Foley video should alert all of us to the coming battle that’s closing in on us, like it or not.

Even Obama at least hints at re-engaging in war against global terrorists. Speaking of the Islamic State on Wednesday, he said, “People like this ultimately fail,” and vowed to bring Foley’s killers to “justice.”

But this isn’t just about justice. It’s also about a fight that, for too long, he suggested was ending, or had nothing to do with us.

A fight he’ll need to do much more to prepare us for.

“I bet they’re asleep in New York; I bet they’re asleep all over America,” says Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in “Casablanca” as he finally abandons his own neutrality in World War II.

As battle draws near, Obama had better wake America up. He has lulled us to sleep for dangerously too long.