LOUVAIN, ISIS, AND EVIL

[Geee]

American Spectator:

The videotaped beheading of photojournalist James Foley shocked us, but it should not have. The Islamic fascisti such as ISIS have always preyed on the innocent and defenseless. Twelve years ago, a like group of barbarians kidnapped and murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. They did the same to him as ISIS did to Foley: an innocent American reporter was kidnapped, held incommunicado, and then beheaded on videotape for the propaganda and shock value.

 

History abounds with such events, barbaric murders on scales both large and small. A particularly notable one began one hundred years ago tonight.

 

In its murderous rampage through Belgium at the outset of World War One, the German army commonly committed mass murders of civilians. As historian John Keegan recounts, 211 were murdered in the town of Andenne, 384 in Tamines, and 612 in Dinant. And then, on the night of August 25, the Germans began the burning of Louvain.

 

In Keegan’s description, three days of sacking and burning left the Fifteenth Century town deserted. More than 200 civilians were murdered, 42,000 forcibly evacuated, and the library of 230,000 books — Louvain was “the Oxford of Belgium” — was burned. For three days, the Germans rampaged and at the end the town was in ruins.