Khaled al-Hamad's outrageous act is not a reason to change our minds about Syria's rebels. As Goya showed, war is vile.
A man has been cut into pieces by his enemies. His severed head now perches on a tree branch. Beside it hangs his headless, armless body and, further along the branch, the missing arms. Two other naked, mutilated bodies also slump around the tree.
This is not a video from Syria such as the one currently causing worldwide shock. Horrific images in this video reveal a rebel commander called Khaled al-Hamad appearing to eat the heart of one of his enemies. He cuts it out of the body on camera while uttering insults to the Alawite religious minority to which President Assad belongs: the rebel has confirmed it is him and this is what he did. He says he also has a video of himself dismembering an enemy with a saw. Time magazine says he ate a lung, rather than the man's heart.
The picture I started with, however, was drawn by Francisco de Goya in the early 19th century and it depicts the horrors of the Spanish peninsular war of 1808-1814. It is called Great Deeds Against the Dead. Khaled al-Hamad's acts on video might easily be given the same title. Do we really believe that soldiers or rebels or even civilians who come across a slain enemy always treat the fallen with respect? Or that the living fare much better at the heart of war?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/15/syrian-video-war-khaled-al-hamad