Excerpt: The Reservoir Dogs Guide To Understanding The Syrian Rebels

Here’s an excerpt from a longer piece, coming soon:

Is the Free Syrian Army ‘moderate’?

Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) is the Free Syria Army and Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) is the al-Nasur jihadists. As you can see, they fight. Mr. White has a big problem with Mr. Blonde, the homicidal maniac who has absolutely no boundaries including gratuitously shooting people at the heist .

Would you call Mr. White ‘moderate’?

Only by comparison and only if you were willing to ignore every other person in the world not as sociopathic as Mr. Blonde.

In reality, Mr. White is a thug – he’s a robber, murderer and career criminal himself. He’s a very bad guy, who at one point in the film calmy explains how to cut off somone’s thumb to get them to comply. It’s only when contrasted with Mr. Blonde that he appears anything close to “moderate.”

The problem in Syria is that the coalition of rebels has a lot more Mr. Blondes then Mr. Whites.