If I learned one thing in 2016, it is that the centralized media of the United States almost always acts to beat the drums of war. Not that this should surprise anyone. Remember Orson Wells’ line, “You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war” in ”Citizen Kane,” which mocked the real-life media mogul William Randolph Hearst’s encouragement of the Spanish-American War.
What surprised me is the outlandish lengths to which mainstream media of the U.S. went to foment conflict, particularly in the case of the ongoing Syrian conflict and the defeat of U.S.-backed rebels in Aleppo, Syria. I don’t refer to it as the fall of Aleppo because it wasn’t. The U.S. has backed elements of the Syrian rebellion for years, yet the rebels are always portrayed as citizens resisting Bashar al-Assad . Newscasts are titled “What Should the U.S. Do?” as if the U.S., Gulf States and Turkey haven’t contributed to the increasing reach of Islamic militants in parts of Syria. There have been instances of rebels backed by the CIA fighting other rebels backed by the Pentagon. Consider what the rebels were doing at the end of the Battle of Aleppo. Even Sec. of State John Kerry admitted “elements of the opposition have threatened people who were going to leave [Aleppo] and in some cases prevented humanitarian assistance from being delivered.”
When citizens were being evacuated from Aleppo, the rebels torched the charter buses in protest. Who could forget President Obama’s wonderful euphemism “moderate rebels,” which implies some percentage of the opposition is something other than moderate?
Let’s look at some of the highlights through the years of the Western media lying or exaggerating the situation in Syria to ramp up public support for the overthrow of Assad. There was the anti-Assad poet and singer who reportedly had his vocal chords cut out by the regime. This was decried in the West.
Well, that poet is still alive. The man who had his throat cut out was killed by the rebels, who then manipulated the event for public relations reasons. There was the gay girl in Damascus, who blogged about Assad’s crackdown on protesters. That story made the rounds in the West. She turned out to be a 40-year-old man living in Scotland. The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, is a group that allegedly saves citizens from the rubble after Russian air strikes. The group has gotten extensive airtime in the West and even has its own Netflix documentary. However, a former British intelligence officer founded the White Helmets, and it receives millions of dollars from Western governments.
There is also the Ghouta chemical attack and Obama’s infamous red line. Obama refused to invade Syria after an alleged Sarin gas attack by the regime on civilians. Thanks to some world-class investigative reporting by Seymour Hersh, we now know that the Sarin gas attack was likely a false-flag attack carried out by Al-Nusra with the help of Turkish intelligence, done to cause Obama to cross the red line and attack Assad. The Director of National Intelligence told Obama the intelligence on the attack wasn’t a slam dunk, and Obama, likely fearing an Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco, refused to enforce the red line.
To be frank, the goal of the U.S. in Syria has always been regime change. American officials don’t care about Assad’s human rights violations. They ignore Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. To insinuate that Assad is some apolitical exception is nonsense and antithetical to history.
luwrobin@umail.iu.edu
