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Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Politics / Foreign Affairs / America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo (745 Views)
Satellite Images Of Mosul, Iraq In 2015 Vs 2017 / Turkish Policeman Kills Russian Ambassador To Turkey Over Aleppo / Before & After Pics Of Aleppo Reveal What War Did To Syria’s Largest City (2) (3) (4)
America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by IamOdin: 10:16am On Oct 27, 2016 |
Exclusive: As the U.S.-backed offensive in
Mosul, Iraq, begins, the mainstream U.S.
media readies the American people to
blame the terrorists for civilian casualties
but the opposite rules apply to Syria’s
Aleppo, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Note how differently The New York
Times prepares the American public for
civilian casualties from the new U.S.-
backed Iraqi government assault on the
city of Mosul to free it from the Islamic
State, compared to the unrelenting
condemnation of the Russian-backed
Syrian government assault on
neighborhoods of east Aleppo held by Al
Qaeda.
In the case of Mosul, the million-plus
residents are not portrayed as likely
victims of American airstrikes and Iraqi
government ground assaults, though
surely many will die during the offensive.
Instead, the civilians are said to be
eagerly awaiting liberation from the
Islamic State terrorists and their head-
chopping brutality.
“Mosul’s residents are hoarding food
and furtively scrawling resistance
slogans on walls,” writes Times’ veteran
war correspondent Rod Nordland about
this week’s launch of the U.S.-backed
government offensive. “Those forces will
fight to enter a city where for weeks the
harsh authoritarian rule of the Islamic
State … has sought to crack down on a
population eager to either escape or
rebel, according to interviews with
roughly three dozen people from Mosul.
…
“Just getting out of Mosul had become
difficult and dangerous: Those who
were caught faced million-dinar fines,
unless they were former members of the
Iraqi Army or police, in which case the
punishment was beheading. … Graffiti
and other displays of dissidence against
the Islamic State were more common in
recent weeks, as were executions when
the vandals were caught.”
The Times article continues: “Mosul
residents chafed under social codes
banning smoking and calling for
splashing acid on body tattoos, summary
executions of perceived opponents,
whippings of those who missed prayers
or trimmed their beards, and destroying
‘un-Islamic’ historical monuments.”
So, the message is clear: if the inevitable
happens and the U.S.-backed offensive
kills a number of Mosul’s civilians,
including children, The New York Times’
readers have been hardened to accept
this “collateral damage” as necessary to
free the city from blood-thirsty
extremists. The fight to crush these
crazies is worth it, even if there are
significant numbers of civilians killed in
the “cross-fire.”
And we’ve seen similar mainstream
media treatment of other U.S.-organized
assaults on urban areas, such as the
devastation of the Iraqi city, Fallujah, in
2004 when U.S. Marines routed Iraqi
insurgents from the city while leveling or
severely damaging most of the city’s
buildings and killing hundreds of
civilians. But those victims were
portrayed in the Western press as
“human shields,” shifting the blame for
their deaths onto the Iraqi insurgents.
Despite the fact that U.S. forces invaded
Iraq in defiance of international law –
and thus all the thousands of civilian
deaths across Iraq from the “shock and
awe” U.S. firepower should be
considered war crimes – there was
virtually no such analysis allowed into
the pages of The New York Times or the
other mainstream U.S. media. Such talk
was forced to the political fringes, as it
continues to be today. War-crimes
tribunals are only for the other guys.
Lust to Kill Children
By contrast, the Times routinely portrays
the battle for east Aleppo as simply a
case of barbaric Russian and Syrian
leaders bombing innocent
neighborhoods with no regard for the
human cost, operating out of an
apparent lust to kill children.
Rather than focusing on Al Qaeda’s
harsh rule of east Aleppo, the Times told
its readers in late September how to
perceive the Russian-Syrian offensive to
drive out Al Qaeda and its allies. A Sept.
25 article by Anne Barnard and Somini
Sengupta, entitled “Syria and Russia
Appear Ready to Scorch Aleppo,” began:
“Make life intolerable and death likely.
Open an escape route, or offer a deal to
those who leave or surrender. Let people
trickle out. Kill whoever stays. Repeat
until a deserted cityscape is yours. It is a
strategy that both the Syrian government
and its Russian allies have long
embraced to subdue Syrian rebels,
largely by crushing the civilian
populations that support them.
“But in the past few days, as hopes for a
revived cease-fire have disintegrated at
the United Nations, the Syrians and
Russians seem to be mobilizing to apply
this kill-all-who-resist strategy to the
most ambitious target yet: the rebel-held
sections of the divided metropolis of
Aleppo.”
Again, note how the “rebels” are
portrayed as local heroes, rather than a
collection of jihadists from both inside
and outside Syria fighting under the
operational command of Al Qaeda’s
Nusra Front, which recently underwent a
name change to the Syria Conquest
Front. But the name change and the
pretense about “moderate” rebels are
just more deceptions.
As journalist/historian Gareth Porter has
written: “Information from a wide range
of sources, including some of those the
United States has been explicitly
supporting, makes it clear that every
armed anti-Assad organization unit in
those provinces [of Idlib and Aleppo] is
engaged in a military structure
controlled by Nusra militants. All of these
rebel groups fight alongside the Nusra
Front and coordinate their military
activities with it. …
“At least since 2014 the Obama
administration has armed a number of
Syrian rebel groups even though it knew
the groups were coordinating closely
with the Nusra Front, which was
simultaneously getting arms from Turkey
and Qatar. The strategy called for
supplying TOW anti-tank missiles to the
‘Syrian Revolutionaries Front’ (SRF) as the
core of a client Syrian army that would
be independent of the Nusra Front.
“However, when a combined force of
Nusra and non-jihadist brigades
including the SRF captured the Syrian
army base at Wadi al-Deif in December
2014, the truth began to emerge. The
SRF and other groups to which the
United States had supplied TOW missiles
had fought under Nusra’s command to
capture the base.” |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by IamOdin: 10:21am On Oct 27, 2016 |
continuation: Arming Al Qaeda
This reality – the fact that the U.S.
government is indirectly supplying
sophisticated weaponry to Al Qaeda – is
rarely mentioned in the mainstream U.S.
news media, though one might think it
would make for a newsworthy story. But
it would undercut the desired
propaganda narrative of “good guy”
rebels fighting “bad guy” government
backed by “ultra-bad guy” Russians.
What if Americans understood that their
tax money and U.S. weaponry were
going to aid the terrorist group
that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks? What
if they understood the larger historical
context that Washington helped midwife
the modern jihadist movement – and Al
Qaeda – through the U.S./Saudi support
for the Afghan mujahedeen in the
1980s?
And what if Americans understood that
Washington’s supposed regional “allies,”
including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and
Israel, have sided with Al Qaeda in Syria
because of their intense hatred of Shiite-
ruled Iran, an ally of Syria’s secular
government?
These Al Qaeda sympathies have been
known for several years but never get
reported in the mainstream U.S. press. In
September 2013, Israel’s Ambassador to
the United States Michael Oren, then a
close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem
Post that Israel favored Syria’s Sunni
extremists over President Bashar al-
Assad.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the
strategic arc that extends from Tehran,
to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the
Assad regime as the keystone in that
arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an
interview. “We always wanted Bashar
Assad to go, we always preferred the
bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to
the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”
He said this was the case even if the
“bad guys” were affiliated with Al Qaeda.
And, in June 2014, speaking as a former
ambassador at an Aspen Institute
conference, Oren expanded on his
position, saying Israel would even prefer
a victory by the brutal Islamic State over
continuation of the Iranian-backed
Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective,
if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to
prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren
said.
But such cynical – and dangerous –
realpolitik is kept from the American
people. Instead, the Syrian conflict is
presented as all about the children.
There is also little said about how Al
Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its allied
jihadists keep the civilian population in
east Aleppo essentially as “human
shields.” When “humanitarian corridors”
have been opened to allow civilians to
escape, they had been fired on by the
jihadists determined to keep as many
people under their control as possible. |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by Aston02(m): 10:21am On Oct 27, 2016 |
And you expect me to read this long epistle from beginning to the end? Haba... to cut the story short, U.S will always fight for their own interest. |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by IamOdin: 10:26am On Oct 27, 2016 |
Source : https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/17/good-deaths-in-mosul-bad-deaths-in-aleppo/ lalasticlala mukina2 humbledbygrace , don't u think this is worth the debate?? |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by IamOdin: 10:29am On Oct 27, 2016 |
Aston02: That is the problem we africans have, we're so impatient. What will it cost u to read it and know the true motive behind what's happening around us.?? |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by Aston02(m): 10:33am On Oct 27, 2016 |
IamOdin: And you think that's the true motive behind the wars? smh... In addition, for anyone who follows world news, it is already a known fact that America is always looking for ways to establish herself as the No 1. Less I forget, I read and reread the story... |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by IamOdin: 2:15pm On Oct 27, 2016 |
Aston02: i don't care if they are No1 or not, am only concerned about the lives lost and the destabilizing effect it has on the affected countries. I think there are other ways to assert influence instead of proxy wars. |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by Aston02(m): 3:40pm On Oct 27, 2016 |
IamOdin: You mind sharing those other ways? They are aware of such other ways but in reality won't make use of it. Let the affected areas look inward to means of settling their own problem without calling dragging the World Powers into it. Plus should either Trump or Clinton be made president let's just hope we don't have another WWIII |
Re: America Twisting Reality: Good Deaths In Mosul, Bad Deaths In Aleppo by IamOdin: 4:14pm On Oct 27, 2016 |
Aston02:As u clearly noted, they knows the other ways to assert influence but won't do it because they gain from the chaos. Have u noticed that they sell weapons to both govt and rebels in a warring country, whn they know fully well that without supplying any of them they will ultimately run out of weapons and the conflict will subside. But they won't cos they are gaining and that's their ultimate interest. The affected countries will want to resolve it themselves but the world's police man the U.S will always want to HELP and if u decline then u're in for a treat. For instance, syria didn't accept their HELP ( they are in syria without syria's permission, they are violating international law yet no one is talking of it) and they resorted to helping the opposition so as to achieve their aim. |
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