The Obama administration has now concluded that the video of American journalist James Foley’s killing is authentic.
Mr. Foley and I both graduated from Marquette University. We didn’t know each other, but it dismays me to think that we both walked the same streets, studied in the same buildings, spent nights in the same bars — maybe even lived in the same dorm? — and now he is dead, beheaded, gruesomely, by the very incarnation of evil.
His fate fills me with a deep sadness, and rage, and a feeling of helplessness. In a better world, what happened to him would happen to no one. His family and friends will be in my prayers. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.
Previously, Mr. Foley was captured in Libya, in 2011, and after he safely returned home he wrote a letter to the Marquette community which shows him to have been a man of deep faith, of compassion and generosity. Click here to read the words of a brave man. And click here to see Marquette’s page on Mr. Foley, which contains, among other things, a link to a speech he gave at the university and a slideshow.
— Follow me on Twitter at @MichaelRStrain.