With U.S. President Barack Obama belatedly ordering airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops of food and relief supplies to refugees in northern Iraq, the world is finally taking action against the Islamic State. Within a few months, the jihadist group, which until recently called itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, has taken control of large parts of both countries, where it has proclaimed a new "Caliphate."
But the real reason to fear the Islamic State is not its lust for power; it is the systematic, cold-blooded way in which its members are erasing the region's social, cultural and demographic past.
Within a few weeks, the Islamic State has virtually eliminated the entire Shiite Muslim and Christian populations from the lands that it controls. The city of Mosul, home to one of the world's oldest Christian communities, no longer has any Christians left. Priceless Assyrian artifacts have been publicly destroyed in a campaign against idolatry.
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