As Russian planes decimate Aleppo, and hundreds of thousands of civilians in Syria’s largest city prepare for encirclement, blockade and siege — and for the starvation and the barbarity that will inevitably follow — it is time to proclaim the moral bankruptcy of American and Western policy in Syria.No: It is a propaganda meme -- a lie which the neocons use to trick the American public into supporting Al Qaeda and opposing an elected secular leader. Not once -- NOT ONCE does Ignatieff inform his readers that Aleppo has been run by Al Qaeda. Not once does he admit that Russia and Assad are making war on the same force that attacked the United States on 9/11. The Russians are liberating Aleppo from the jihadis -- and I say Thank God.
Actually, it is past time. The moral bankruptcy has been long in the making: five years of empty declarations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go, of halfhearted arming of rebel groups, of allowing the red line on chemical weapons to be crossed and of failing adequately to share Europe’s refugee burden as it buckles under the strain of the consequences of Western inaction. In the meantime, a quarter-million Syrians have died, 7 million have been displaced and nearly 5 million are refugees. Two million of the refugees are children.
This downward path leads to the truly incredible possibility that as the Syrian dictator and his ruthless backers close in on Aleppo, the government of the United States, in the name of the struggle against the Islamic State, will simply stand by while Russia, Assad and Iran destroy their opponents at whatever human cost.
It is time for those who care about the moral standing of the United States to say that this policy is shameful. If the United States and its NATO allies allow their inglorious new partners to encircle and starve the people of Aleppo, they will be complicit in crimes of war. The ruins of our own integrity will be found amid the ruins of Aleppo. Indiscriminate bombardment of civilians is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. So is the use of siege and blockade to starve civilians. We need not wait for proof of Assad’s and Vladimir Putin’s intentions as they tighten the noose. “Barrel bombs” have been falling on bread lines and hospitals in the city (and elsewhere in Syria) for some time. Starvation is a long-standing and amply documented instrument in Assad’s tool kit of horrors.
We all remember the massive lies which prodded us in the Iraq misadventure. Ignatieff's fantasies about "barrel bombs on breadlines" were pulled out of the same orifice where Dubya got his bunk about Saddam's WMDs. (For more, see here.)
Repeatedly, the propagandists call for a no-fly zone. Since Assad and Putin possess air forces and the jihadists do not, a no-fly zone would answer the prayers of ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Ignatieff's pro-Al Qaeda propaganda barrage has a purpose: The neocons hope to force Obama into joining Turkey's ground invasion of Syria. Turkey clearly fears to take on Russian power alone -- but with American backing, the Turks will go in. The end result would risk World War III.
If Putin blinks first, what then? The jihadists will take power in Damascus. The corrupt Erdogan regime has profited immensely from shipping all of that ISIS oil, and they will want to keep the party going.
Frankly, we would do better to join Russia in an invasion of Turkey. The goal of eliminating the evil Erdogan family should be somewhere near the top of our list of political desiderata.
6 comments:
Putin won't blink first.
Concur...propaganda, you're soaking in it.
Ignatieff ran for Prime Minister of Canada not long ago... His epic failure was part of the story of how Harper lasted for almost a decade...
Ignatieff and Wieseltier are both writing true to form.
Lobster has an interesting tidbit. It notes that ex Canadian PM Stephen Harper was a CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) operative in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A senior Canadian intelligence official named Gareth LLewellyn was reportedly targeted by the CSIS for revealing this 'state secret' and had his career destroyed. There was also a woman who was similarly targeted over an affair with a Liberal Party PM. Michael Ignatieff was leader of the Canadian Liberal Party from 2008 to 2011. When these claims of police state thuggey were drawn to his attention he chose to ignore them. This from the Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Ignatieff also is tied to George Soros' Project-Syndicate, an agency with a clear anti-Putin agenda.
On a side note, blogger Karl Naylor is an excellent read on geopolitics and energy.
The Syrian government has controlled the largest portion of Aleppo throughout the war. The civilians living there are definitely not fleeing to Turkey, so that they can rub shoulders with terrorists on the border. The portion of the city controlled by Al Qaeda lost the majority of its population long ago, those people having fled to government controlled areas or to Turkey. The remaining population is comprised largely of terrorists and their families.
Western propagandists rely upon the ignorance of their audience, fostered by corporate and state media, to broadcast the unchallenged lie that the entire city of Aleppo is being surrounded by Syrian government troops and subjected to siege. I expect that Hillary Clinton, the evil wench, will soon start braying about this on the campaign trail to demonstrate her mastery of foreign policy. Will Bernie have the balls to call her out on it?
Well, on the plus side, the majority of comments on that "article" are echoing what you write here Joseph (despite the feeble attempts of a few sock puppets to deny it). So that gives me some hope. This is why I almost never pay attention to the MSM at all. You usually tell me everything I need to know about their rank propaganda exercises posing as "news".
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