Is President Obama repeating the mistake of Britain’s liberal Prime Minister Anthony Asquith in dealing with jihadists a century ago?

While expressing shock and grief about the beheading of two American hostages by the Islamic State monsters, Obama has insisted he would not go beyond a token role in defeating the forces of the self-styled Caliph Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi.

He has tied his hands by ruling out boots on the ground while ordering occasional airstrikes against the enemy in the context of a “discrete” contribution to the war. Worse still, he has ruled out any military action in Syria.

In that context he could be compared with Asquith.

From 1911, having established their presence in Somaliland, the British faced a challenge from a jihadi movement led by another self-styled caliph, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, who had set up his caliphate in 1899 with the ambition to conquer first the Horn of Africa and later, God willing, the entire world.

At first, the British found the man and his mission as rather amusing, but changed their minds after 1913’s battle of Dul Madoba, in which the forces of the caliph routed a British contingent.

via Lesson of the ‘Mad Mullah,’ the original beheading jihadist | New York Post.

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