It always seems the end for the worst of humanity comes with a pathetic irony. Those who would waste the lives of hundreds of thousands, promoting themselves as steely icons of irresistible strength and ruthless ideologic will, often find their end in the pathetic circumstance of cowardly trying avoid their fate rather than facing their justice – by hiding in a hole (Saddam), behind the bodies of their women (Bin Laden), or in the most recent iteration, the ISIS thug Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi- hiding behind his children. No matter – the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends inevitably toward justice.

President Trump announced today the successful conclusion of a years long effort to corner and eliminate the self proclaimed leader of the ISIS caliphate – a hellishly cartoonish but murderously serious attempt to create a medieval autocracy along the lines of a perverted interpretation of Islam. Baghdadi, literally too radicalized and impatient even for the thugs of Al Qaeda, broke out to form a competitive cell of terrorists recruited among the most vicious and sociopathic of islamic outcasts, determining the sophisticated mass murders and patient revolution of Bin Laden and his followers were insufficient to their rage and determination to see their caliphate in their lifetimes. Preying on the calamity of Syria and the post Saddam weakness of Iraq, Baghdadi for a brief time achieved stunning success across the wastes of Syria and western Iraq, at one time swallowing tens of thousands of square miles of territory, the massive city of Mosul, and threatening the very edge of Baghdad itself.

Derided as “junior varsity” by imperious and distracted President Obama, Baghdadi triumphantly proclaimed the existence of the caliphate from the holy mosque of Mosul, and set about to live out the cartoon hell he had envisioned for those in the grasp of the caliphate. The innumerable tragedies played themselves out through the leering clarity of the internet, as Baghdadi’s perverse vision of islamic rule was baldly projected for all to see, and fear. The throwing of gays off roofs, the raping and enslavement of thousands of yazidi women, the burning alive of ISIS captives, the wanton destruction of thousands of years old relics of great civilizations in Iraq and Palmyra, Syria, and the outright thievery, extortion, murder and thuggery extreme even for the most extreme of the world’s criminal element were the calling cards of Baghdadi’s caliphate.

Fueled by the money they stole and the oil fields they captured, briefly the caliphate seemed to exude a permanence that entranced thousands of deviants from across the globe hoping to live out their fantasy of being a lord and executioner to the helpless other thousands who ISIS had swept up. The king thug Baghdadi attempted to place himself in the role of ultimate Caliph, accruing wealth and a harem of enslaved young women he could rape and dominate.

That is of course where the tragic arc of the life of Kayla Mueller was drawn into the barbarous arc of the king thug Baghdadi. As I reviewed at length in Ramparts in 2016 – Ramparts People We Should Know – Kayla Mueller – Kayla was martyred in the unholy clutches of Baghdadi, but her story of incredible fortitude and human decency under the most awful and agonizing of personal distress, was in many ways the trigger to the inevitable end of the thug king. Her indomitable faith moved Kayla to withstand the most intolerable of human perversion , and the circumstances of her calling in life – “For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal” – transcended her 2015 death in the manner of sainthood.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice and the ultimate judgement of the Devine. President Trump, who had made the centerpiece of his administration the destruction and elimination of ISIS, was notified by the long arm of intelligence that Baghdadi had been identified hiding in the small village of Brisha, Syria, along the Turkish Syrian border. It was determined secretly last week to organize and inject a Special Forces Task Force with the solitary purpose of bringing the man responsible for the deaths of Ms. Mueller and so many thousands of others unto final justice. The mission was named “Kayla” – as no one had forgotten, and the justice to be served was to be her ultimate triumph over the thug king. The firm and final blow found its mark and delivered its sentence to the mass murderer and tyrannical dictator of innocents, in the coward’s way out using a suicide vest, miserably taking 3 of his innocent children with him, when his escape down a tunnel was blocked.

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has met the ignominious end so often associated with the worst of us, but like others of his ilk, not before he has ruined tens of thousands of lives. His name should disappear into the trash bin of history,

Hopefully, when the history of this particularly ugly chapter of humanity is behind us, the resonance of goodness that was imbued in the life of Kayla Mueller will outlive the sordid confinement she was forced to endure under the heel of the likes of Baghdadi. The region needs it. Humanity needs it.

Somewhere in Prescott, Arizona, Kayla’s parents have been notified by the President that the mission achieved justice for Kayla and that her personal human triumph over calamity was the ultimate inspiration to provide the final blow to the monster reign of the thug king Baghdadi. It won’t probably be enough to assuage all the pain, but hopefully it will bring closure. That would be, after all the evil that has befallen the world, a small injection of godliness we so desperately need.