Of cowards, dogs and underwears – Why Trump is humiliating Baghdadi even after his death

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the most dreaded terrorist in the world was killed by the US Armed Forces in a daring midnight raid after months of surveillance. The US President Donald Trump claimed that Baghdadi died like a “coward and a dog” which is indeed true. As the US Armed Forces circled him in a village in North-Western Syria, Baghdadi along with his three children ran into a dead-end tunnel after being chased by US Military dogs.
Baghdadi realised his impending end and indeed took the coward’s way out as he detonated his suicide vest which killed him and his three children as he died “whimpering and crying and screaming” as claimed by President Trump.

Following the elimination of this dreaded ‘religious scholar’ and terrorist, the Trump administration has been out to humiliate Baghdadi and mortify his sympathisers. There is a reason why Trump has been humiliating Baghdadi long after his death as he seeks to send a stern message to the radical Islamists.

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The ISIS terrorists didn’t fight to save their leader as most of them quickly surrendered when the US Armed Forces entered the compound where Baghdadi was hiding. Baghdadi in his death didn’t even spare his children and hence, proving Trump’s claim of ISIS terrorists being “very frightened puppies” true in the moments leading up to the death of Baghdadi. In a telling move, Trump recently tweeted a picture of a dog who played a pivotal role in capturing Baghdadi. This was as if to say that not only did Baghdadi die like a dog but was also killed by dog.

An extremist Islamic leader like Baghdadi or his ilk must-see dogs as dirty, impure, and evil as Trump sought to label Baghdadi’s death as a triumph of a dog over the most dreaded, most violent Islamist terrorist. The K9 dog who captured Baghdadi garnered over 550K likes and the word “dog” has been consciously used by the Trump administration to describe the death of Baghdadi.

The sequence of events which prompted Baghdadi to kill himself will send shivers down the spine of any radical Islamist as he deservedly died in a gruesome manner. Baghdadi’s body was mutilated thanks to the detonation of his suicide vest and details have emerged that the US Armed Forces used Baghdadi’s underwear to match the DNA and confirm that the mutilated body was indeed Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

The use of underwear to match Baghdadi’s DNA is a symbolic move and a lesson for Islamists and terrorists to hold on to their underwears, which should send waves of humiliation across Islamist quarters.

The reasons for this intended humiliation are plenty, for the ISIS leader was indeed the brains behind the most gruesome execution methods and terrorist attacks but some incidents were etched in the American military’s memory.

The mission was aptly named after Kayla Mueller who was an American Human Rights worker who was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the ISIS. Kayla, who was described by her family as a “compassionate and devoted humanitarian,” travelled to Turkey in 2012 after her graduation and then crossed the border into Syria, on a mission to help those fleeing the civil war in the country and when ISIS was gaining ground in the Levant.

Kayla was leaving a hospital run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders in the Syrian city of Aleppo when she was kidnapped by ISIS in August 2013. The barbarity of the crime was so extreme that Baghdadi too had raped the American while in captivity. While the ISIS claims that Kayla was killed in 2015 as a casualty of the airstrikes carried out by Jordan. However, Jordan denies any airstrikes of the kind and it is widely believed that Kayla was killed by ISIS while in captivity. Unfortunately, to date, Kayla’s cause of death remains a mystery as her family looks for answers and till date, her body hasn’t been recovered.

There are many other heinous crimes of Baghdadi but the Kayla Mueller story signifies his barbarity for the American administration and military. The mission also signifies the tremendous amount of worth that the United States places on the life of its citizens, in other words, an American life for Americans is not to be forgotten until avenged brutally. ‘He died like a dog’, lest anyone forgets.

With the gruesome killing of Baghdadi, Trump has sent a stern message to the world against Islamic Terror. As the President of the US, he has sent a message to Islamists across the world that a dog’s death and nothing more is warranted for the extremes of their kind. Trump has gotten his Osama Bin Laden and has rightly asserted that Baghdadi’s elimination is much bigger than that of Osama Bin Laden. In a sequence of events mirroring to that of Osama’s death, whatever was left of Baghdadi’s mutilated body has been dumped into the sea message and has effectively riled up his core voter base which is averse to Islamism.

Baghdadi’s death further signifies the tremendous commitment that America has towards its citizens. Its aggression, no matter how ruthless, against the enemy turns into a uniting factor across party lines which is unfortunately not the case in India as the opposition is full of Pakistan sympathisers. Under Modi government, however, India is showing similar aggression as is evident from the surgical strikes, and the Balakot airstrikes, post the Uri and Pulwama terror attacks respectively, which are an indication of the start of a similar era in the country. Targets like Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim, all of whom have Indian blood on their hands, are just waiting to be hit.