Fox News analyst Brit Hume noted on Tuesday that, despite public opposition to a new fight in Iraq, ISIS risks awakening a “sleeping giant” if their brutal beheadings and other atrocities spur angry Americans to advocate war against the Islamic radicals.
Hume spoke with Fox’s Bret Baier about the Tuesday release of a second video showing the savage decapitation of American journalist Steven Sotloff by an ISIS fighter. “What about the political power of this image?” Baier asked. “What does that mean here in the U.S.?”
“Well the American military is, at the moment, kind of a sleeping giant, and so is the American public in terms of public opinion about conflict and war,” Hume replied. “ISIS may get some propaganda points out of these hideous atrocities among people who sympathize with them — who can’t be all that numerous in this world — but I think the risk ISIS takes by doing these things and publicizing them in this way is it might awaken the sleeping giant.”
“The United States military — it would take a while, it would be costly — could wipe out ISIS,” he declared. “It’s not gonna happen unless the public becomes aroused. But these kinds of atrocities just might have that effect.”