According to press reports, Jordan’s King Abdallah quoted Clint Eastwood to Congressmen he met with the day before yesterday. The King happened to be in Washington pleading for more help, financial and otherwise, in dealing with the Hashemite Kingdom’s mountainous problems—not least the refugee burden spilt over from the now-protracted Syrian civil war—when the Daesh (ISIS) video of the caged immolation of Moaz al-Kasasbeh hit the electronic airwaves. The King reportedly said something fairly unmistakable about getting after the “bad guys.”

Abdallah’s choice of locution is revealing, at least to those who know something about him. That apparently does not include the reporters and editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post, whose extensive coverage in today’s papers both nevertheless omit a set of rather pertinent facts—of which more in a moment.

Since the King returned home to a hero’s welcome—uncharacteristic these days—there has been much talk about a wider Jordanian role in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition. But the media both in the region and outside of it has had little to say about specifics. The initial speculation is that Jordan will now contribute more to the anti-IS air war, a possibility made likelier according to some thanks to the new-found support for Jordan’s participation in the battle.

Before Kasasbeh’s hideous execution, there was some advocacy in the country for Jordan’s withdrawal from the coalition, even from Moaz’s father, who is a powerful East Bank tribal sheikh. That has ceased for the time being, not because opposition to partnering with the United States in killing Sunni Muslims, while the region’s arch mass murderer, Bashir al-Assad, gets a pass, has disappeared. It hasn’t. Or because King Abdallah is not as universally loved and respected as was his father, including in recent months even among the core East Bank tribal supporters of the regime. That remains true, too. It’s because it would be unseemly now to break ranks. It is the interest of various political strains in Jordan to claim a piece of al-Kasasbeh’s martyrdom. It remains to be seen if the regime can mobilize the changed psychological dynamic into something of lasting use.

U.S. officials reportedly look with favor on the prospect of more Jordanian airstrikes, but they have no evidence of any such thing in prospect. And this is where the U.S. MSM omissions become relevant. When I very briefly and inconsequentially met Abdallah back in 1987, he was but 25 years old, and pursuing a military career. (At the time he was at the Walsh School at Georgetown University.) Back then neither he nor anyone else would have laid even long odds on his becoming King. Educated in both Britain and the United States, Abdallah had his heart set on special forces operations, and for that there was a good reason.

As his father’s eldest son, Prince Abdallah was bound to be a regime man, even if he did not expect to become King (and never really wanted to be). The military made sense, but not just any military. Jordan is a small country with a small standing army and a small order of battle. So from the beginning, really going all the way back to the days of Glubb Pasha, the Hashemites understood that they needed to be very smart and extremely proficient because they could never be big and brawny in military terms. So first with British and then U.S. help, they developed the shrewdest and most professional intelligence and special operations capability in the Arab world. The Jordanian Special Operations Command was founded in 1963—the oldest such professional command in the Arab world. It is not entirely coincidental, therefore, that the largest CIA station in the region is in Jordan, and has been for years. Nor is it a random occurrence that the level of cooperation and coordination between selected agencies of the two governments is very close. (A third government in the region, in turn, has some liaison with this couplet. Take a wild guess which one.) Note in this context that the Sunday, February 1 Washington Post front page revealed previously classified details of the 2008 hit on Imad Mughniyah in Damascus. It turns out that the CIA played a far more active role in that than had heretofore been known. So if you want to know may happen next, use your imagination, combined with the information about to be laid on you in the next few paragraphs.

It so happens that Prince Abdallah became the head of JSOC in November 1993. In November 1996 he reorganized Jordan’s special ops forces, doctrine, and structure. Before that he had been detailed to the United Kingdom and Germany to learn about and participate in special ops training. Along the way, Abdallah learned how to pilot a Cobra attack helicopter. Like his father, apparently, he likes to go really fast, make noise, and break things.

Abdallah also created Jordan’s Special Operations Training Center. This is a live-fire training center devoted to special operations and anti-terrorism strikes. Not too far north of Amman, built into the side of a quarry, it has been turned into a commercial venture, having trained special forces for several Arab governments. It is the only such facility in the world.

Now keep all that in mind for a moment, please, while we address another matter of relevant context.

Most of the commentary coming out of the region, and from the battalions of terrorism experts in the United States, is sort of schizoid about the overall impact of Daesh’s decision to murder Kasasbeh in such a barbaric fashion. Most, like Adnan abu-Odeh—a much-seasoned Jordanian official—think they’ve gone too far this time. Others wonder whether the deed will actually increase recruiting and other means of support, especially at a time when Daesh has been on the losing end of battles in Diyala Province and in Kobane. The answer is that the matter is contingent: It depends on how wide the reliable delta between what the Arab states say and what they will actually do will grow in coming days.

The regimes and associated institution—Al-Azhar, the Arab League, and so on—have spilled lots and lots and lots of words. They are really good at that. And so what’s the expectation of action? Will there now be Arab boots on the ground going after Daesh in the three major cities, and more than 20,000 square miles of territory, it still holds? No one thinks so, and they’re right.

This matters because anti-establishment recruitment to Daesh from all over the Sunni world thrives on this all-talk/no-action optic. The reason is that the credulous have been brainwashed into thinking that the West is at war with Islam, and that they have a religious duty to defend the faith from the kafir. Remember, as Bernard Lewis once pithily put it, in the West there are countries that have religions, but in the Middle East there are religions that have countries—this is the prism through which most Arabs living in the region see the world. More important, the young, earnest, juiced, and usually unemployed have been equally brainwashed into thinking that the established Arab regimes are all in the clutches of the West. So they are part of the war against Islam, as it has been interpreted to them (without serious religious educations) by political entrepreneurs (also without serious religious educations except in a few rare cases). That is why the Arab states are all talk and no action; it’s a con—short for conspiracy, of course. Like what isn’t in that part of the world? So, you see, the more the “real” faithful are “up against it”, the more noble it is to be ruthless, uncompromising, unbent, and ready to become a shahid if that’s what it takes.

King Abdallah understands all this, so he knows he must act instead of just talk. That acting started small with the swift execution of two terrorists the regime had tried but failed to trade for al-Kasasbeh. But he’s not finished, and he has spoken of bringing retribution “onto the houses” where the bad guys sleep. Abdallah has been reluctant up until now to let Jordan go “all in” against Daesh. The body language of his body politic was not ready for it. Daesh has had supporters in Jordan, especially in some disaffected rural areas. Most serious people in Jordan would rather muscle up against the Assad regime, but by itself there isn’t much tiny Jordan can do in that regard. The King has not been able to persuade the Obama Administration to be less passive, and that passivity would turn out to be the most dangerous and expensive option of all—and in that he certainly has not been alone. Jordan has been willing to train Syrian rebels on its soil, but reluctantly given its refugee challenge and the danger of contagion within the Kingdom from trainees one cannot really control. As to Daesh, Jordan stepped up when asked but, again, for domestic political reasons Jordan has not leaned far forward on its skis. Kasasbeh’s capture and telegenic murder has much widened the King’s maneuvering room, at least for a while, and the heavy talk begs real a action lest Daesh be allowed to benefit from al-Kasasbeh’s killing.

What will the King order to reduce the delta between mere Arab talk and action? What will he do to seize the moment to try to lock in Jordanian unity, at least for as long as he can?

Well, how should I know? But if I were Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, I would make a point of not sleeping in the same bed on consecutive nights. It took the U.S. Government more than a decade to find and dispatch Osama bin-Laden, a disgrace by any reasonable measure. I once met a Jordanian Cobra pilot who just isn’t that patient. If Abdallah is anything like his father, it’ll take every adviser in Nadwa Palace to talk him out of flying the lead strike Cobra himself! Perhaps Abdallah has nicknamed his favorite copter “Clint.”