Juan Cole: American Hypocrisy: Against Muslim Sharia Law at Home, Calls it 'Moderate' in Syria

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/10/20/american-hypocrisy-against-muslim-sharia-law-home-calls-it-moderate-syria

I just watched the 5 pm news hour on CNN anchored by Wolf Blitzer, and the editors had clearly decided that the lead was that Russian bombing in south Aleppo risks creating a new wave of refugees. They also stuck to the cover story that the Russians are only attacking the “moderate rebels.”

American bombing of populated areas has never been reported in that way on mainstream cable news. The US bombing that killed Sanafi al-Nasr, said to have been the no. 2 man in the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the Support Front, was reported on the same show as a great victory. But was he in a completely deserted area? Were any civilians killed around him? It has now come out that most US drone strikes don’t even kill the intended target; probably it is the landlord’s family that mainly dies. Was al-Nasr a renter?

Whether Russian bombing is more or less egregious than any other can could be debated. I suspect it is less egregious than that of the Syrian air force itself, though that wouldn’t be saying much. Robert Fisk reports that the Syrian Arab Army is frustrated with the Russians precisely because their air force is being very cautious about civilian casualties:

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There are lots of small rebel groups in the hinterlands of Homs, Hama and Aleppo and in Idlib province who are not al-Qaeda. But most have become hard line Salafis a la Saudi Arabia who want sharia law and allow as how they might not kill all the Alawis, Christians, Druze and other minorities that come under their rule but keep them as second class citizens under a dictatorship. Some are still Muslim Brotherhood, some of whom want a Muslim state but with elections.

However, these groups are small and not very effective fighters, and have been forced to ally with al-Qaeda to avoid being killed by the Syrian Arab Army and in hopes of taking more territory. Moreover, the amount of Syrian territory now held by rebels who want democratic elections and full legal equality for all Syrians would be in my estimation zero percent. Almost all Syrian rebels now want a society ruled by sharia or a hard line medieval notion of Islamic law. (Sharia itself, as private practice and individual choice, is as inoffensive as Jewish Halakha or Roman Catholic canon law; but making a fundamentalist interpretation of it the basis for national law is a whole set of human rights crimes waiting to happen).