Vladimir Putin, in his defence of Russia’s bombing missions against Islamic elements residing in the mountains of northern Latakia, Syria remarked, “These are people who must be directly qualified as international terrorists.”

In that one statement alone Mr. Putin has shamed and exposed the inefficacious promises and boasts of Western and UN strategists who have been vacillating between doing nothing and next to nothing against ISIS, the terrorist entity that, although lacking any obvious form of human decency, is commonly condemned by both Muslim and non-Muslim alike for its emphatic willingness to commit all manner of cruelty against those it considers “enemies of Islam.”

What irks me these days are those who spend more time condemning the Muslim world (an umma suffering more loss of life every day from terrorist violence than any other religious group) for its alleged lack of agitation against Islamist terrorism, or excoriating Vladimir Putin for his military “intrusion” into Syria and what may be his less than honourable motives for doing so, than they do exposing Western and Middle Eastern governments for their insensate and languorous inaction while ISIS madmen murder, rape, and torture both Christians and Muslims—primarily defenseless civilians—with complete impunity.