Just a quick observation today triggered by an editorial in the Washington Post. The bit that caught my eye and got me thinking was the opening paragraph. It went thus:
It has been a month since the White House informed journalists that President Obama had decided to supply Syrian rebels with light arms. Since then, the regime has launched a bloody new offensive in the city of Homs, using heavy artillery and rockets to attack residential areas held by the rebels. Thousands of people have been killed, adding to a death toll approaching 100,000. President Bashar al-Assad has been boasting of his military successes and of the failure of outside powers to bring down his regime. Meanwhile, the United States has failed to deliver any of the promised munitions to beleaguered rebel forces — “not even a single bullet,” one source told The Post’s David Ignatius.
The inference is obvious; Bashir al-Assad must be a nasty bastard for killing all those innocent civilians with artillery and rocket attacks on residential areas held by the rebels.
Well, anyone who bombs residential areas killing innocent civilians is a nasty bastard in my book – no matter who does it. But here’s where the hypocrisy seeps in; did the editorial board of the Washington Post use the same critical tone when the Israeli government used heavy artillery and rockets on residential areas held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009?
No they didn’t. In fact, just the opposite. Because Hamas were in residential areas, the Western media accused Hamas of using the civilians as human shields. Well, if that’s the case, why aren’t the Western media not accusing the rebels in Syria of using the residents of Homs as human shields as well?
As it turns out, the only people caught using human shields in the Gaza Strip were the IDF!
Arrogance and hypocrisy; the values that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’.
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