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The horror of the Syrian video is the horror of war The horror of the Syrian video is the horror of war
(4 months later)
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.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.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?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?
Images such as this gruesome, vengeful feasting on an enemy's flesh make news today because, in spite of the immediacy of modern media, we generally see a far more sanitised picture of war than people did in the age of Goya, or earlier. Strangely enough, the depiction of war in today's newspapers and television is far more sentimental than it was in the past. In his lost masterpiece The Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo da Vinci reduces war to a savagery very like what this video shows. A copy of a central part of the painting by Rubens shows one soldier about to hack off another's hand, their horses biting each other, and the mens' faces as masks of hate. Da Vinci wrote that a depiction of a battle should include desperate characters who "take revenge with nails and teeth".Images such as this gruesome, vengeful feasting on an enemy's flesh make news today because, in spite of the immediacy of modern media, we generally see a far more sanitised picture of war than people did in the age of Goya, or earlier. Strangely enough, the depiction of war in today's newspapers and television is far more sentimental than it was in the past. In his lost masterpiece The Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo da Vinci reduces war to a savagery very like what this video shows. A copy of a central part of the painting by Rubens shows one soldier about to hack off another's hand, their horses biting each other, and the mens' faces as masks of hate. Da Vinci wrote that a depiction of a battle should include desperate characters who "take revenge with nails and teeth".
Many paintings of battles, although they show the pageantry of war, also reveal the barbarism it unleashes. The dead are crushed under horses, the wounded struggle in mud and blood. Extreme violence is recorded in paintings when today it would be left veiled by the news media. A 17th-century painting that hangs in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum shows the mutilated bodies of the De Witt brothers hanging upside down after they were accused of treason.Many paintings of battles, although they show the pageantry of war, also reveal the barbarism it unleashes. The dead are crushed under horses, the wounded struggle in mud and blood. Extreme violence is recorded in paintings when today it would be left veiled by the news media. A 17th-century painting that hangs in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum shows the mutilated bodies of the De Witt brothers hanging upside down after they were accused of treason.
Such works of art come from an age when it was taken for granted that wars, riots and political murders were deliberately cruel releases of the worst human beings are capable of. A war atrocity is shown, non-judgmentally, in the Bayeux tapestry. A crushed enemy lies under a chariot in one of the oldest images of war, the so-called Standard of Ur.Such works of art come from an age when it was taken for granted that wars, riots and political murders were deliberately cruel releases of the worst human beings are capable of. A war atrocity is shown, non-judgmentally, in the Bayeux tapestry. A crushed enemy lies under a chariot in one of the oldest images of war, the so-called Standard of Ur.
Why, then, is the video from Syria considered so troubling? It is vile of course, but that is because war is vile. Good soldiers know that. "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will," the American civil war general William Tecumseh Sherman told the people of Atlanta before burning their city to hasten the defeat of the slaveholding south. "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it."Why, then, is the video from Syria considered so troubling? It is vile of course, but that is because war is vile. Good soldiers know that. "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will," the American civil war general William Tecumseh Sherman told the people of Atlanta before burning their city to hasten the defeat of the slaveholding south. "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it."
It is a mystery why we are more hypocritical about war's true nature than Sherman or Goya were. Is it because the modern west has not seen major conflict on its own soil since 1945 and so can afford to tell itself pretty lies? Or is it because democratic nation states need to soften the images of conflict in order to win popular support for it? It is only the bad guys who are brutal, we like to think.It is a mystery why we are more hypocritical about war's true nature than Sherman or Goya were. Is it because the modern west has not seen major conflict on its own soil since 1945 and so can afford to tell itself pretty lies? Or is it because democratic nation states need to soften the images of conflict in order to win popular support for it? It is only the bad guys who are brutal, we like to think.
Whatever the reasons, there is no excuse for taking this video of a brutal wartime act as some kind of reason for refusing to support Syria's rebels. The truth is, every war and every army is capable of great deeds against the dead and monstrous ones against the living. In Crete in 1941, fleeing Germans were deliberately run over by British tanks. That was not a war crime. It was war.Whatever the reasons, there is no excuse for taking this video of a brutal wartime act as some kind of reason for refusing to support Syria's rebels. The truth is, every war and every army is capable of great deeds against the dead and monstrous ones against the living. In Crete in 1941, fleeing Germans were deliberately run over by British tanks. That was not a war crime. It was war.
This video is not a reason to change our minds about Syria's rebels. It is a reason to stop kidding ourselves about what war is.This video is not a reason to change our minds about Syria's rebels. It is a reason to stop kidding ourselves about what war is.
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