U.S.-allied rebel group in Syria also engages in beheadings

This screen grab from a video shows a child,
encouraged by the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army,
helping to behead a man with a machete.

So, here we are again, 13 years later, trying to decide how to hit back with military air strikes against Middle East terrorists.

The 2001-02 struggles to understand al-Qaida’s motivations and to intelligently comprehend the difference between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds has been replaced by a much more complicated set of rules on the ground this time around.

The militant groups fighting for and against the brutal Syrian regime, if the various brigades are accounted for, number in the dozens. Motivations and agendas run the gamut.

Surely, ISIS must be destroyed. But relying upon a proxy war in a cesspool of bad actors is not the way to satisfy American interests abroad.

In Syria, we have jihadist groups -- some pro-government, some trying to end Assad's reign -- and the U.S. is supposed to cut through all of that to choose a moderate rebel group to do our fighting for us.

Two things: The “moderate” groups are labeled in such a way only in comparison to all the other jihadist groups in the Mideast; and if we had armed the rebels waging war against the monstrous Assad regime a year or two ago, chances are that most of our weapons eventually would have fallen into the hands of ISIS, just as the surrender of arms by the cowardly Iraqi forces played out earlier this summer not far from Baghdad.  

Far more disconcerting is that the American voters’ wild swing in favor of taking military action in Syria and Iraq was, according to polls, based largely on video of the unspeakable beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

Here’s the reality: The main rebel group that has received covert U.S. assistance, the Syrian Free Army, which will now receive arms and training in Saudi Arabia courtesy of the Obama administration, has reportedly also beheaded people.

Back in December 2012, the watchdog group known as Human Rights Investigations revealed a despicable video in which a young boy armed with a machete, under encouragement from an FSA brigade, kicked off the bloody process of beheading of a man who was deemed loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“From watching footage from rebel media it is clear some rebels are making a special effort to bring very young, impressionable children to their sectarian, jihadi ideology,” Human Rights Organization said at the time.

“Well, apparently they aren’t content with that, and the use of a child as an executioner marks a new low,” the group commented on humanrightsorganization.org. “One can only hope that media and public opinion might dissuade the likes of Barack Obama …and (British Prime Minister) David Cameron from continuing to support these terrorists.”

Numerous other reports of atrocities led to a conclusion by the United Nations that FSA is guilty of war crimes, including kidnappings, torture and executions.

In July 2013, military.com, an American website, reported that a priest and another Christian were beheaded before a cheering crowd by FSA insurgents who said their targets aided and abetted the (Muslim) enemy, specifically Assad's military forces.

An undated video that made the Internet rounds showed two unnamed men with tied hands surrounded by a cheering crowd of dozens, just moments before their heads were cut off with a small knife. The attackers in the video then lifted a head for show, and placed it back on the body. The incident took place in the countryside of Idlib, according to media reports in the region.

In June, President Obama first proposed a $500 million plan to arm and train the moderate Syrian opposition. Now, he has upped the ante, despite a U.S. history of proxy wars gone wrong.

Perhaps the commander-in-chief should consider how devastating it would be if, in the near future, videos surface of U.S.-financed rebels beheading their enemies in a manner all too reminiscent of the shocking videotaped decapitation deaths of Sotloff and Foley.