The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's reported execution of British aid worker David Haines is likely only the latest in what promises to be an escalating, serialized slaying of innocent people to prove its terrorist credentials and recruit more members, national security experts told Newsmax.
"They are the ones. It is not al-Qaida," former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra said. "They are trying to recruit more people. They believe the techniques that they are employing right now are successful in their recruitment and their funding — and they're going to keep going exactly in that direction.
"They know the West is mad at them, OK?" Hoekstra continued. "But I don't think that they're seeing a robust Western response to this yet.
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"At this point, we don't have a frightening coalition, so they're just going along — they're killing Americans, and they've just killed this Brit, they're killing Christian minorities — and they’re seeing a half-hearted response from the West.
"What they're seeing is their influence within the jihadist movement growing exponentially, so they're going to continue doing exactly what they're doing," Hoekstra said.
The Islamic State claimed that it had beheaded Haines, 44, who was kidnapped last year while working for the French agency ACTED, in retaliation for British Prime Minister David Cameron entering a coalition with the United States against the militants.
The beheading would be the third by ISIS in recent weeks, after those of two U.S. journalists who were taken hostage in Syria, James Foley, 40, and Steven Sotloff, 31.
Haines is a father of two from Perth in Scotland.
The three executions were recorded in videos released to the Internet. The video of Haines' beheading was available on
the website of the private terrorism monitoring group SITE.
As in the other videos, it showed a masked militant beheading Haines. He was featured at the end of the video released on Sept. 2 showing Sotloff's death.
The video was entitled "A Message to the Allies of America" — and it opened with Cameron strongly pledging last month to work with the Iraqi government and allied Kurdish Peshmerga forces to defeat the Islamic State.
"This British man has to pay the price for your promise, Cameron, to arm the Peshmerga against the Islamic State," said the masked man, dressed in black and speaking with a British accent.
He was standing over Haines, who was shown kneeling and wearing an orange jumpsuit. The video then showed the beheading of the kneeling man. The deaths in the earlier videos followed virtually the same script.
At the end of Haines video, another hostage was shown — with the masked terrorist saying that he would be killed if Cameron continued to support battling the Islamic State.
In a statement late Saturday, Cameron called Haines' murder an "act of pure evil" and vowed that Britain would do all it could to bring the killers to justice.
"This is a despicable and appalling murder of an innocent aid worker," the prime minister said. "It is an act of pure evil.
"We will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice, however long it takes," Cameron said.
President Barack Obama condemned "the barbaric murder" of Haines and pledged its commitment to working with the U.K. and other nations to defeat the Islamic State, which also is referred to as ISIL.
"The United States stands shoulder to shoulder tonight with our close friend and ally in grief and resolve," Obama said in a statement. "We will work with the United Kingdom and a broad coalition of nations from the region and around the world to bring the perpetrators of this outrageous act to justice, and to degrade and destroy this threat to the people of our countries, the region and the world."
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On Friday, Haines' family appealed to his captors to respond to their messages.
In interviews with Newsmax, Hoekstra and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden said the video gave no doubt that ISIS murdered Haines.
"Obviously, you do what you can do, but why would any of us have reason to believe that it's not what it is?" asked Hayden, who is also the former director the CIA and the National Security Agency. "It just shows the very nature of the adversary here.
"It shows the true nature of this enemy we call ISIS. This is the literal meaning of terrorism: doing violence to the innocent for political effect."
While ISIS specifically named Cameron in its latest video, neither Hayden or Hoekstra told Newsmax that it would likely affect Britain's determination to eliminate the terrorists.
"They're attempting to intimidate Western leaders," Hayden said. "I don't think that works — and it hasn't to date, and I don't expect it to work in the future.
"In fact, in the United States, it's pushed the president more in the direction of action, not away from it," Hayden observed. "Cameron was already quite strong in some of the things he's said."
In the future, though, world leaders may be more cautious in their public statements on their plans for ISIS, he said.
"I don't know if killings like this could or should affect what democratic leaders say," Hayden said. "I'm sure that they'll be counseled not to be as public in terms of some of the things they might say. I certainly hope that it doesn't affect some of the things they might do."
Regardless, Hoekstra said: "You're not going to base foreign policy off the brutality against two Americans and one British citizen. You can't formulate foreign policy that way."
Hoekstra served eight terms in the House of Representatives as a Republican before leaving office to run unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2010.
"I don't think this will have any impact at all on the long-term strategy of the Brits," he added. "They recognize this as a threat. They recognize it as a brutal threat.
"Hopefully, their resolve to join the United States to battle ISIL will be firm and resolute."
Newsmax wires contributed to this report.
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