Will the West Ever Stop Lying About Syria?

Politics Features Syria
Will the West Ever Stop Lying About Syria?

Speaking in Brussels last Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that “We [the U.S.] are not giving up on the Syrian people, and we are not abandoning the pursuit of peace.”

Bullshit.

The U.S. government, as everyone knows (but only a few are willing to admit), has never had any interest in stemming the violence and bloodshed that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. On the contrary, the Obama administration has been actively perpetuating it from the very beginning, through a variety of means.

The armed opposition in Syria—with whose righteous cause we’re supposed to sympathize—is at its core an Islamist proxy army serving the interests of external governments, most notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (all allies of the U.S.), who want to see Syria’s secular president replaced by a Sunni theocrat.

It’s always been this way. The “peaceful protests” that touched off the conflict in 2011 were anything but; many of the protesters were armed from the very beginning, prepared to use deadly force against the police and army to trigger a revolution on behalf of their state-sponsors.

Was the U.S. government ignorant of these plans, concocted by its regional allies, to wage holy war on Syria? Of course not; Bashar al-Assad’s was one of several regimes shortlisted for toppling following 9/11—this in spite of the fact that Assad cooperated with our “war on terror” and, unlike us, does not arm or train jihadists.

The U.S. played a central role in manufacturing the Syrian uprising—a serious crime—but it didn’t stop there. Taking advantage of the lawlessness engendered by Muammar Gaddafi’s deposition and murder (another of Obama’s projects), the CIA wasted no time opening up a corridor through which foreign weapons and personnel could flow into Syria and join the ranks of the “moderate opposition,” e.g. Jabhat al-Nusra, i.e. al-Qaeda in Syria.

This had the obvious effect of sharply escalating the violence that was already tearing the country to shreds.

Meanwhile, mainstream Western media waged a relentless propaganda campaign against the Syrian government, accusing it, without evidence, of everything from deliberately gassing civilians to running SS-style concentration camps. Atrocities committed by the “moderate rebels” went unreported; indeed, one had, and still has, to dig around for alternative, independent coverage of the conflict to get an accurate picture of the kind of people our government supports.

Fears that Assad, with Moscow’s help, might actually manage to save Syria from a jihadist takeover are growing. This explains our media’s increasingly hysterical attempts to portray Syria’s president as a megalomaniacal sadist who kills children for fun.

As John Kerry contended in his recent speech, “this tragic war has been made worse by the utter depravity of the regime, that doesn’t hesitate to still use gas, chlorine, mixed with other ingredients to kill its citizens, that drops barrel bombs on hospitals and children and women.”

This business about chemical weapons continues to be parroted by outlets like the New York Times, in spite of the fact that no evidence has been presented to support the allegation. It’s been known for years that terrorist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra have a chemical weapons capability, and moreover that such weapons have been used against Syrian soldiers; nevertheless, any time a chemical attack occurs, no matter how crude, Assad is automatically and irrevocably held responsible.

But then, lack of evidence is hardly a consideration when it comes to demonizing an official enemy. Take for instance the Sept. 20 attack on a UN aid convoy, which killed some twenty people and officially spelled the end of the shaky ceasefire agreement brokered by the U.S. and Russia. Immediately following the attack, Kerry pointed his finger at Russia, later doubling down in spite of the following statement from UN humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke:

“We are not in a position to determine whether these were in fact airstrikes. We are in a position to say that the convoy was attacked.”

Far from accusing Russia, the UN conceded that the attack wasn’t even necessarily an airstrike, meaning it could have come from a surface-to-surface missile, meaning it could have come from a nearby rebel outfit.

Kerry was unfazed, however; he was determined to exploit the crime in order to divert attention from recent American malfeasance. Recall that on Sept. 17, three days before the humanitarian convoy was attacked, the U.S. air force killed over 60 Syrian soldiers “by accident,” effectively guaranteeing that the ceasefire would fail.

“We did it, a terrible accident,” Kerry said. “But I got to tell you, people running around with guns on the ground, from the air, is a very different thing from trucks in a convoy with big UN markings all over them.”

Translation: What we did was bad, but what we say the Russians did, without proper evidence, is worse. Therefore, forget about what we did.

There are many questions surrounding the American shelling of Syrian troops on Sept. 17, which opened the door for ISIS to capture strategic territory overlooking a military airport. Was it really an accident? Or was it an operation designed to undermine the fragile ceasefire and preclude any further cooperation with Moscow?

Think about it: The “accident” occurred just 48 hours before the U.S. and Russia were to begin military collaboration against ISIS and al-Nusra. Said collaboration, which presupposed seven straight days of ceasefire, was to include intelligence-sharing between the old Cold War adversaries, something the Pentagon was openly opposed to.

As reported by the New York Times, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, commander of the U.S. Air Forces Central Command, made a rather staggering admission when asked whether the Pentagon would abide by the agreement:

“I’m not saying yes or no. It would be premature to say that we’re going to jump right into it.”

In case the reader missed it, that’s an officer in the U.S. Air Force indicating that he might choose to defy an order given by the president. Such is the degree of Russophobia infecting the Department of Defense—it apparently justifies insubordination, perhaps even mutiny.

Furthermore, the U.S. Air Force was intimately familiar with the area, Deir el-Zour, that it “accidentally” bombarded. According to an article in the Daily Beast (which credulously accepts the official government line), the U.S. “has conducted scores of precise strikes around the city targeting ISIS and should know the city well. The U.S. has conducted, on average, nearly 20 strikes a week around Deir el-Zour.”

The notion that U.S. pilots were unaware of who they were bombing for an hour straight is, to put it mildly, difficult to take seriously.

One thing is clear: whether the air assault on Syrian troops was a mistake or an act of aggressive insubordination by the Pentagon, the U.S.—not Russia, not Assad—bears primary responsibility for the ceasefire breaking down. Hence Kerry’s eagerness to change the subject and blame Russia for the attack on the aid convoy that occurred three days later.

Since then, the Syrian army has continued to advance on Eastern Aleppo (currently occupied by al-Nusra and adjacent terrorist groups), and the West’s propaganda machine has gone into overdrive. Articles shaming the Obama administration for “turning its back on Syria” and “allowing genocide” continue to proliferate.

The focus now is on Assad’s supposed penchant for maiming and murdering children, though this preoccupation certainly predates the ceasefire. In one particularly galling example of base opportunism, mainstream Western media exploited an image of a bloodied and dust-covered Syrian child—”the boy in the ambulance”—in order to promote their regime change narrative.

First of all, anyone who needs to see a picture of an injured or dead child in order to grasp the horrors of modern warfare ought to have their head examined. Here’s a newsflash: War is grotesque; it kills innocent men, women and children; it destroys families, cities, countries and cultures. If you don’t know this, you don’t know anything.

Second, if our media has such empathetic concern for the children being killed in Syria, why is their coverage limited to the victims of airstrikes carried out by the Syrian and Russian governments? Are we expected to believe that our terrorist allies in Syria don’t have the blood of any children on their hands?

There is in fact a terrible irony to the famous image of “the boy in the ambulance”—later identified as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh—whose bloodied face became the sentimental symbol, in the West, of the Syrian government’s brutality. Every mainstream media outlet, from TODAY to the Times, featured the harrowing image on their front page. The subtext was crystal clear: by failing to intervene in Syria, we’re allowing this to happen, and it will continue to happen unless we take a stand against (read: bomb) the Syrian government.

The Telegraph even ran a short piece written by the man who took the picture, Mahmoud Raslan.

“The tears started to drop as I took the photo,” Raslan writes. “It is not the first time I’ve cried. I have cried many times while filming traumatized children. I always cry. We war photographers always cry.”

One can certainly appreciate that sentiment. But hold on a minute. As it turns out, Mr. Raslan is selective about which children are actually worthy of his tears. Those murdered in the most gruesome fashion imaginable evidently do not qualify, as evinced by a smiling selfie Mr. Raslan took with a group of “moderate rebels,” two of whom were filmed (I won’t link to the video—you can find it if you wish) cutting the head off a twelve-year-old Palestinian child in the bed of a pickup truck.

The atrocity was committed in a rebel-controlled region of Aleppo (yes, that Aleppo) by members of Nour al-din al-Zenki, an opposition group directly supported by Turkey and, until 2015, the United States. The young boy was accused of being a member of a Palestinian paramilitary unit allied with the Syrian government.

Teary-eyed photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan had no qualms about posing for a gleeful picture with two of the child’s executioners. Indeed, he captioned the image, uploaded to Facebook, thus:

“When you see the leaders on the front, know that victory is coming, with God’s permission. From besieged Aleppo, wherein they all have their faces blackened.” (Translated from Arabic by the Canary.)

In another image uploaded to Facebook, Raslan expresses solidarity with a group of suicide bombers—some of whom are clearly teenagers.

“With the suicide fighters,” he writes, “from the land of battles and butchery, from Aleppo of the martyrs, we bring you tidings of impending joy, with God’s permission.” (Again, translated from Arabic by the Canary.)

The major media outlets in the West devoted few or no column inches to the savage beheading of the twelve-year-old Palestinian boy. Nor can you find many (any?) articles about Aleppo’s adolescent suicide bombers, who have been brainwashed to believe that, in blowing themselves to pieces, they’re doing Allah’s work and will be eternally rewarded in paradise. Contrarily, you would be hard pressed to go a single day without coming across a new article detailing the effects of Syrian and Russian airstrikes in Aleppo.

This glaring discrepancy is precisely what one would expect to observe in a state-controlled media climate, according to which only the victims of our enemies are deserving of comment, let alone sympathy.

To apprehend how absurd the narrative has become, consider the wholly uncritical response to Netflix’s terrible new documentary about the “White Helmets,” a jihadist propaganda organization—sponsored and financed by the U.S. and Britain—whose members run around rebel-held territory masquerading as humanitarian first responders.

Despite abundant evidence illustrating their true motives (watch this for a succinct breakdown), the White Helmets are celebrated in Western media as an independent, impartial NGO dedicated to saving lives threatened by the Syrian government. Their propaganda, while transparent, is remarkably effective. They’ve been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Ignorant celebrities like Ben Affleck and Alicia Keys have publicly endorsed them. Meanwhile, no major media outlet, as far as I know, has sought to examine whether the White Helmets are in fact the non-political humanitarian heroes they profess to be, which tells you everything you need to know.

The incredibly superficial Netflix documentary actually carries no information whatsoever, unless you count the fact that one of the White Helmets admits to having fought alongside a rebel faction for a period of three months. The majority of the film takes place in Turkey, where a group of White Helmets are attending some sort of humanitarian boot camp. There the viewer is very briefly introduced to the leader of the organization, Raed Saleh, who the filmmakers fail to mention was recently denied entry into the United States for undisclosed reasons (that are easy enough to surmise). Nor do the filmmakers explore why the Turkish government, which has long supported jihadist elements in Syria, hosts training camps for the ostensibly neutral White Helmets.

The “documentary,” in other words, is a joke.

At the end of it, we’re informed that the White Helmets “have saved over 58,000 lives” since 2013, an outlandish figure that comes from the White Helmets themselves and has not been verified by any independent organization.

It’s hard to tell whether director Orlando von Einsiedel and producer Joanna Natasegara even realized they were making a propaganda film. A glance at Natasegara’s Twitter page—replete with the usual Western talking points re: Syria—suggests that she did in fact know, but there’s also the possibility that she’s been sufficiently indoctrinated to believe all that nonsense. Either way, she and Einsiedel now function as cheerleaders for U.S. military aggression in Syria. John Kerry salutes them for their service to the American war machine.

Needless to say, as long as stealth Islamist groups like the White Helmets are lionized by our government and our media, and as long as atrocities committed by the “moderate opposition” are systematically ignored, a permanent cessation of hostilities in Syria remains a pipe dream, which is what started the whole mess to begin with.

Share Tweet Submit Pin