Well Dressed Barbarians

Edith Bouvier and Daniel Williams have safely made it out of Syria, and the question that is glaring for everybody is why was their bravery and sacrifice made necessary in the first place? Why would such brave people risk life and limb to make it to the besieged parts of Homs in order for the world to find out what is really happening? If there were Salafist armed gangs that were hell-bent on turning Syria into an Islamic emirate then what was a French journalist - one without a headscarf - doing in their midst? Not only that, why would they have given such "infidels" the best medical treatment available given the circumstances?

Of course there is no rational answer that you can get from this barbaric bunch of thugs we call a government. The journalists are part of some cosmic conspiracy involving the Zionists, the Qataris, the Saudis, the Americans and al Qaeda. One government spokesman questioned the motives of the journalists and why they were "sneaking" out of the country. Somebody needs to tell this hapless fool that  the soldiers sent to Homs are shooting anything on sight, including unarmed civilians, and that their shelling of residential areas resulted in the deaths of two of these journalists.

This isn't just a struggle against tyranny, it is a struggle for the sanity of an entire country. A blatant cocktail of lies and deception is being rammed down the throat of every single man woman and child in Syria, and if Assad survives then the lie will have survived. It's nothing short of a struggle against total barbarism, albeit one in which the ruffians are dressed in expensive suits and can congratulate each other on empty titles which they acquired through the barrel of a gun. The fact that these journalists have sacrificed so much isn't something to be taken lightly, because there is a point when the outrageous just can't be tolerated and justified in the name of a unique security situation, a greater cause, or a particular cultural or geographical circumstance. People around the world cannot be fooled forever, and the same standards which led people to condemn a George Bush must be applied to a Bashar al Assad as well, otherwise it is hypocrisy.