Yes, it was hard to get back to sleep the night we heard the news of the Jordanian pilot’s horrendous end. ISIS be damned! I thought. But with the next breath I could only think that our own barbarians did not have to wait at any gate. They were insiders. Home grown. Godly. Our neighbors, friends, and kin. People like us.

I think jumping to the conclusion that this is a defense of ISIS is too much of a black-and-white response (no pun intended). I think the author is simply taking a moment to remember that we do a lot of dehumanizing in war, and that we, too, have done some terrible things - but we don't think of ourselves as monsters. I think the author is trying to wrestle with an interesting philosophical point here - that history tends to repeat itself, and maybe if we view ISIS as human beings like us, we can better understand their motives, and better fight their atrocities.