Is there a pattern here?
This sickening atrocity in London is exactly what we are paying the same kind of people to do in Syria
— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) May 22, 2013
The cold blooded murder of Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers – just outside his barracks in Woolwich – saw Al Qaeda-type savagery and bestiality explode in our midst for the first time since 7/7. It is the kind of savagery and bestiality that is no respector of borders, race, religion, or creed. It is the same kind of savagery we saw last week in the film of the so-called freedom fighter in Syria cutting out the heart and lungs of a dead Syrian soldier, prior to holding them up to the camera and starting to eat them.
—John Wight, Socialist Unity
Both Galloway and Wight are pleased to join in the general outrage over the Woolwich murder by comparing it to the brutality of some of the rebels fighting to topple the Assad regime in Syria– and specifically the notorious video of a single rebel fighter. The point here is to use the murder of Lee Rigby as a means of discrediting the armed opposition to Assad– and therefore to help prop up a regime which has engaged in systematic and wholesale savagery against men, women and children to vastly greater degree.
It will come as no surprise that both Galloway and Wight have expressed their hope for a victory by Assad’s forces, without acknowledging the massacres of civilians routinely carried out by those forces.
With their efforts to portray the anti-Assad rebellion as essentially an al-Qaeda operation, Galloway and Wight have found common ground with Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky– who at this point stands as good a chance as anyone of being the 2016 Republican nominee for president.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, which voted overwhelmingly to arm elements of the Syrian opposition in a bill co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). “This is an important moment,” Paul said, addressing his Senate colleagues. “You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda. It’s an irony you cannot overcome.”
The legislation, which would authorize the shipment of arms and military training to rebels “that have gone through a thorough vetting process,” passed in a bipartisan 15-3 vote.
Of course the longer that the US and other Western nations hold off on arming the non-extremist elements among the Syrian rebels, the more powerful the extremists become.
