Matt Welch on the Reality and Propaganda of War

The threatening-looking man on the January 2015 cover of Reason is an Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist with a British accent who took the lead role in propaganda videos showing the beheading of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, acts of horrifying brutality that helped propel the United States into war. So why did we put this image on the cover of Reason? Because, writes editor in chief Matt Welch, we are using a version of a startling image to illustrate the foreign threat du jour. But unlike most, we also see it as an indictment of the way foreign policy is conducted nowadays.