Take a step back and you'll realize just how feverish the US media propaganda machine is right now re: Syria.
Every day we have new pictures of bloodied/dead Syrian children, articles describing the horrors of war and frantic warnings of a genocide that could happen any day now.
Now ask yourself: Why did you hear practically nothing about Syria for the past 4 years? Moreover, is anyone under the illusion that war isn't horrible? Did you think it was only strong, burly men getting killed before you saw that video of the kid in the ambulance?
I'm not trying to take away from this story, but I also see it for what it is: manipulative propaganda being pushed by a country that has a proxy war to win.
Finally, ask yourself this: Do you think all of the guns, bombs and technology we've provided to "freedom fighters" in Syria were only used to kill strong, burly men?
It's because SAA completed the encirclement of E Aleppo. You can pinpoint it to that event, just a few months ago. That is when all the hysteria started. To be fair, that encirclement is the worst thing to happen to the rebels in the entirety of the war. If they lose there, they have basically lost the war. It's happening, it will just trickle very slowly for the next few years. That is all unless there is stronger Western intervention (particularly by the US).
The media campaign on Aleppo is just the war drums beating subtly to hopefully get the public behind a future intervention. Especially under a future Clinton admin.
The coverage has been a disgrace though, hardly even acknowledging that the rebels in E Aleppo are overwhelmingly jihadists, fighting for an exclusionary Sunni theocracy.
It's a disguise of neutrality. They don't talk about the rebels or who they are or what they do, but miss no chance to vilify the Syrian and Russian governments. You see how it's not neutrail at all? The revolution is grossly misrepresented in mainstream Western media. The pro democracy protests of 2011 are very long gone. It''s become foreign powers using jihadis to topple Assad long ago. The coverage has lagged several years now and refuses to acknowledge the facts on the ground.
The only reason there has been a response and coverage of ISIS is because of terrorist attacks in the west. As far as what is happening in Syria, ISIS is not particularly worse than most of the rebels in Idlib and Aleppo.
Pretty much anytime I see coverage (to be fair I'm watching BBC, reading things other than CNN or the like) it makes it clear that there are no good guys here, just various forms of victims and victimizers. If there's one steady factor I've noted across all sources though, it's the inability or lack of willingness to connect this incredible surge in violence and instability across North Africa and the Middle East to climate change and drought.
The "Arab Spring" was just part of that; people who couldn't work, couldn't feed themselves or their families. It was always going to go downhill, but people love their narratives of hope.
Only the pro-rebel noncombatants. Now that rebel-held east Aleppo is surrounded, there are articles every day about how terrible it is and how many people are suffering. But when loyalist-held west Aleppo - which has at least four times the population - was surrounded in fall 2013, not a peep from anyone.
The timing is very strange. It seems highly unlikely that Obama would initiate any new actions before the election as it would likely sink his preferred candidate.
That makes me think that the CIA is pushing for more intervention after the election. I think this also explains why Hillary is taking every opportunity to resurrect Russia as America's boogyman, given that they're on the opposing side in Syria.
I'd say Russia being widely suspected of hacking her and all of her friends to help her opponent is a sufficient explanation for her to talk about.. them doing that..
Don't be gullible. They have no proof that Russia performed those hacks (I assume because you're on HN you understand that it is impossible to trace those attacks, and that identity is easily spoofed on the internet).
There's a circumstantial case, and more importantly, Hillary very likely believes it.
Even if she doesn't? The domestic political angle is a much better reason to bring it up in the debates than some 9-dimensional plan to invade Syria. It's an election.
The plan isn't 9-dimensional, and it's never "an election." The next leader of what is, at least for now, still one of the powerful nations in the world is about change. Only a fool wouldn't take advantage of having a rapt audience for three national debates to hammer "Russia bad" down our throughs if their hopeful foreign policy hopes to nail down our oil security for the next 50 to 100 years.
First off, it's ALWAYS "an election" when an election is on. The immediate goal of winning the election is probably 99% of her reasoning for hammering Russia about the hacking attempts. It's the best political answer to anything about the content of the leaked emails for like 5 different reasons.
She also laid out her parameters for any potential future intervention in Syria, in the same debate, and there was no talk of massive escalation, just the same secret ninja stuff we're presumably already doing. America doesn't have an appetite for another nation-building experiment, and we've got way less interest in Syria than Russia does.
I realize "just take her at her word" sounds a little naive, but you're not exactly on firmer ground when you say "no, trust me, I know her secret plan".
If there's no appetite, you can make one. See media coverage. See media coverage before the Iraq invasion. See any of the many examples from history.
Nobody knows, but I have a strong feeling that you're gonna look back at that comment in a years time and feel pretty foolish about it. Her stint as SoS showed you all the evidence you need of her hawkishness.
Someone needs to make a trustworthy escrow site for betting on situations like this.
I could take a blanket bet against "any conspiratorial theory about Hillary Clinton" and clear 80% of them.
Her stint as SoS featured a 20-something-day operation in Libya, laying groundwork for detente with Cuba and Iran, while getting the chemical weapons out of Syria without a shot fired.
I'll go on record that we just keep doing the same stuff we're doing in Syria. Unlikely that we even do a no-fly-zone, there's absolutely no reason to risk open combat against Russia. That's crazy.
EDIT: Maybe US advisors with the Kurds in Mosul wind up technically in Syria while helping get rid of ISIS. But it's likely that Assad will be shored up enough at that point to demand no US troops over the border and we go along with it.
Check out Adam Curtis' newest documentary, HyperNormalization.
Among many, many, fascinating topics, Curtis details the fluctuating celebration and denouncement of Col. Qaddafi of Libya by western powers and media as a means to distract from the more complicated issues that were actually linked instead to Syria, such as the Lockerbie bombing.
Syria, for decades, has both been a distraction and a distractive force in great power politics. We're only really paying attention now because, as Thomas L. Friedman put it: "Libya implodes, Syria explodes.
I often hear of US propaganda going through newspapers and Hollywood movies. From the outside, the effect is obvious. But internally, does anyone knows how it works?
Does the CIA sponsor moviemakers if they show things this way or that way? Does someone blackmail journalists into following a line? Who decides what is the story to develop? What's in it for a journalist or a scenarist when they have to sway from depicting the situation neutrally and when they have to add a twist that may discredit them if discovered? Is it marketing which demonstrates that some topics are currently popular, therefore they all align on the same topic? Do they receive money from private interests who need to push war, do they receive blackmail, career advancement or are the journalists and scenarists simply endoctrined into those topics?
Read a book called Manufacturing Consent, it covers the media propaganda machine pretty well. Granted, it's of the Cold War era, but the principles are the same.
I've been hearing about horrible conditions in Syria just about nonstop since the war began. I don't think I'm hearing any more about it now, but if I am, it's probably because there's a big election coming up and this is an important issue for it.
> Now ask yourself: Why did you hear practically nothing about Syria for the past 4 years?
The fighting in Syria and the associated problems has been regularly and frequently covered in US mainstream media since it started, shortly after the Arab Spring events in the region.
> Moreover, is anyone under the illusion that war isn't horrible? Did you think it was only strong, burly men getting killed before you saw that video of the kid in the ambulance?
Plenty of people in our cushy western societies are unaware of the realities of war. You want proof? Have a look at how much people have complained about the 5000-odd US military dead in Iraq over a period of greater than a decade. That's 10% of the dead in Vietnam in a similar, and there were single days with more dead soldiers in WWI and the US Civil War.
It's a lot easier to be hawkish when someone else has to deal with the consequences of your opinion.
Take another step back:
One side is defending its territorial integrity with help of Russia.
Another side are terrorists receiving support of US/NATO. Why shouldn't former totally obliterate the latter? Because of their big bully ally? At least don't make it looks like human rights defense, this is all propaganda.
Bombing civilians is never okay, though; it's not okay when the government does it, it's not okay when the rebels do it. It should be roundly condemned regardless of the perpetrator, and brushing it off as "defending territorial integrity" shows your _own_ bias, in my opinion. There are no "good guys" and there's a fucked messy situation there and I personally only have sympathy for the completely innocent people caught in the crossfire. Anyone doing the firing I have none for.
If the people you call civilians are terrorists loaded with heavy guns gave by western "allies", I think it is ok to bomb them. I think it is not okay for a foreign country inadvertently bomb neither side, though.
What a lovely comment to see on HN regarding the genocidal suppression of a popular revolt. I suppose it's very tempting to falsely equivocate both sides when you have a tendency to distrust your own government.
The major rebel forces in Syria are not a "popular revolt". They are professional, foreign-backed hardline Islamic extremists (which is why they could hold out for five years against Assad, Iran, and Hezbollah).
"The alliance was formed in March 2015 under the supervision and coordination of Saudi cleric Dr Abdullah al-Muhaysini. It consists of Islamist rebel factions mainly active in the Idlib Governorate, with some factions active in the Hama and Latakia Governorates. In the course of the following months, it seized most of Idlib province. It is actively supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
In an October 2015 publication, the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War considered Jaish al-Fatah as one of the "powerbrokers" in Idlib, Hama, Daraa and Quneitra provinces, though not in Damascus province, being primarily "anti-regime" and "anti-Hezbollah" but not necessarily "anti-ISIS".
At its founding, Jaish al-Fatah contained seven members, three of them—al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and Jund al-Aqsa—were directly connected to al-Qaeda or have a similar ideology. With Ahrar al-Sham being the largest group, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham together were reported to represent 90 percent of the troops." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Conquest
Discussion on Al Jazeera Arabic, "Should We Kill All Alawites?". (Alawites are the largest group in Syria backing the Assad government.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtNYSUqYHw
This is ridiculous hyperbole. The only people engaging in genocidal activities are the Sunni rebels who have massacred villages of non-Sunnis. No action taken by the government was ever targetted a specific ethicity or religion. That is why it is still supported by every cut of Syrian society. Sunnis, shias, druze, christians, kurds, etc. Have you ever considered that the coverage you have consumed may be misrepresenting the war in order to push an agenda?
al nusra front, a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda is controlling eastern aleppo. it's such a shame that washingtonpost is becoming the propaganda outlet for Al Qaeda.
I personally know friends who've been suffering from Al Nusra front shelling their residential areas in Aleppo for the last three year; The majority of Aleppo residents are supportive of the Syrian gov and Russia finally, going after the terrorists; except for about 10% who are supportive of Al Qaeda and al nusra front.
in the following video, a british journalist goes to Aleppo, and meets with people there, and you'll be shocked that the TRUTH is exact opposite of what propaganda outlet like WAPO, CNN, etc. want to spread.
Quick aside to the fact that in Aleppo, Damascus, Kirkuk, and Daraa, and Mosul and that many other places in Syria and Iraq are horrible places to be.
The situation in Syria as it stands today is complicated, sure. But it's also pretty easy to summarize why Aleppo and its outcome is important in the proxy war.
Aleppo is a major population center and a "hub" in the spoke-and-hub network of cities and towns in Syria. When - and if - there is a political transition for the government of Syria, the forces that stand in Aleppo will have an outsized influence in the outcome.
In this manner Aleppo has been an important battleground for the current administration in Damascus and the Russians who have national security interests in the secular government of Syria. For the same reasons the opposition - the rebel and terrorist forces in Syria - have been trying to take and hold Aleppo.
The United States and Russia had been trying to broker a ceasefire, but ultimately the city's value to proxy forces and foreign backers proved too much and the mutual trust between great powers too little for a negotiation to be reached.
Now that the ceasefire is off the table, the United States does not have a legal option for intervening. It has not ruled out - and may be engaged today in - covert illegal activity with respect to attacks on Syrian Government forces and infrastructure. On the other hand Russia was invited in by a government that is still internationally recognized and can intervene in Aleppo on a legal international basis.
One option open to the United States is to try to intervene in Aleppo on account of a humanitarian basis, in which case it needs public opinion and material support to bolster a legal argument.
This is the reason that the United States and its media companies have been focusing so much on the situation in Aleppo, narrating it as a particularly horrible instance of the civil war.
The same sort of narrative campaign, it is easy to notice, is absent from reporting on Sanaa (Yemen), on the current operations in Mosul, of the Turkish (illegal?) military invasions of Greece and Iraq, of US bombing in Northern Syria, of Kabul and of military operations in Afghanistan, or of the mass innocent casualties in a number of places around the world from the Predator Drone mass assassination programme.
Aleppo is a tragedy. Truly. The proxy war in Syria - and all of the regional and foreign power who have made it worse by pumping weapons and funding into it (including the US) - is a horror, and an acknowledgement that we still aren't at a place with our civilization where we can resolve tensions of competing international interest with rules, peace, diplomacy, and mutual benefit.
Great comment, and it's so refreshing to find someone who really understands what is going on (in contrast, my Facebook feed is filled with people wailing about every new photo of a bloodied Syrian child).
Still, I'm afraid that it won't be enough. The war drum is already beating towards Syria, and I wouldn't be surprised if the US mounted an offensive shortly after HRC is crowned--to stop some imminent genocide or other humanitarian crisis, no doubt.
Said Greek islands that Turkey (under Attaturk) lost when it settled a peace treaty (Treaty of Lausanne) after WWI and which Turkey has had a habit of violations and military interventions of since that time (which has continued to this day).
Know that the invasion of Iraq is of course much more serious, as the are all of the others in the list. The inclusion of the Greek islands was just verbosity from yours truly, and not intended to imply more than a touchpoint for those familiar with Turkey's illegal incursions.
Please don't let that distract you from the more important general topic written above. If you want ignore the aside about Greece - it's not important to the overall message.
It's odd how posts like these can bring things in perspective for idle observers. Before reading this, war was something that happened "somehow". A building somewhere gets bombed, but there's no context, it might as well have been a building floating in nothingness.
After reading this, you realize it's happening to people like you. One day, they were minding their own business, studying, going to work, doing everything you do, and the next their house got bombed and now they don't know whether they'll be alive next month.
There is a cost to not playing the game, as Europe is in the early stages of discovering. Just like there was a cost to the US, to let Haiti go to hell, paid for in immigration. The difference is that Haiti is tiny, and the Middle East and North Africa are huge.
My point is that a relatively tiny number of people couldn't be stopped, and a much much larger number of people in Europe's case certainly won't be. As you say though, the upside is that most people are just... people; average people. The downside is that it appears Europe is in the process of swinging hard to the Right in denial of reality.
I think you're assuming that I meant not playing the game going forward. But if we hadn't been meddling in the Middle East for 40+ years, then perhaps there wouldn't be the amount of chaos we see now. Any time I hear the phrase "national interest" come out of the mouth of a politician, I roll my eyes. It's usually some thinly-veiled excuse to drop bombs on people.
And let's not delude ourselves: the giant social welfare states in Europe and the United States act as magnets for refugees and immigrants.
The level of cynicism in the world's leaders is breathtaking. How many leaders said anything along the lines of, "We will take as many refugees as our people are willing to feed, house, and clothe, since the people of this nation are the most generous, loving people on earth"? Not a single one. It's always got to be the job of the State when a politician comes up with an idea. And of course the people get to pay for it through coercive taxation no matter if it's a good idea or not ;-)
Maybe that's true, although realistically it's not just the US who played in the Middle East; Europe played in the region for about 150 years, the Soviets had their fun, etc. Besides, a lot of the harm we've done is just making some terrible leaders extremely rich, and well armed.
Putting that aside, this would be happening in some form without that, because of climate change. The sad fact is that we're entering a period of increasing global instability, as previously livable regions become unlivable, and visa versa. I can't think of a single reason why some desperate Eritrean (for example) would say to themselves, "Oh no, these people who have been central to that process of climate change don't want me to live with them. I guess I'll just stay here and try to make it work. Maybe I'll starve and die, but hey, it's the law."
There is a cost to playing, there is a cost to not playing; welcome to reality. At some point we've done so much damage for so long, that there is no real winning move left.
How are they going to achieve that? Naval blockade? Shoot on site? Millions and millions of highly motivated people are going to overcame anything short of overwhelming violence.
And yet, it will come to that: Europe just cannot take in tens of millions of people in a couple of years.
Once the social systems start collapsing, even the unthinkable (armed borders and the like) will become an option.
Nice? No. But what's the alternative, committing state-level suicide?
That's why the first rule of rescue is ensuring the safety of the rescuer: if the rescuer is down, there's no hope left for the victim. And if Europe goes down, that will not help any migrants, either.
Europe doesn't have the money or resources to maintain that for the decades and decades it would take. Resisting the inevitable is suicide, not the other way around. Is it going to be pleasant or easy? No, it's going to be difficult and fraught with upheaval, but it's the result of choices we've all made for decades. Time to pay the piper.
Well, that's what the common people in Germany are also asking themselves, but our beloved leaders (Merkel) are pushing the immigration over our heads for "humanitarian" reasons. And when I say "humanitarian", I mean "cheap labor for the industry".
Any concerns regarding massive immigration, cultural differences, homeland security, etc. are labelled as xenophobic hate-mongering, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
What do you think you could do to stop it, recognizing that this is going to be an escalating issue for decades to come? How exactly do you propose to close yourself off from immigration without becoming an utterly closed society?
There are no good guys here, just various variation of bad. You just get to choose which bad guys you back.
Personally I find it hard to believe that the USA is backing Al Qaida (or what ever they have decided to call themselves this week), but that is middle east politics for you.
Why is that hard to believe? The USA created Al Qaeda in our first foray into Afghanistan; they're literally blowback from training mujahedin to fight the Soviets.
Even if the USA helped create Al Qaeda (rather controversial) I still find it hard to believe that anyone in the USA thinks it is a good idea to support them today.
this is a dishonest portrayal of events. the arab fighters in afghanistan were not supported by the US and were an extremely marginal presence to begin with. you could make a case for elements of the taliban having links to US support years prior to its establishment, but not AQ affiliates.
It's amazing what these people have to go through. I hope one day there will be an agreement that such bombings are not acceptable no matter who is doing the bombing.
There is the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans cluster bombing outright, but conveniently neither Russia or Syria signed it.
Even if they did, international treaties/law banning weapons tend to go out the window in times of war. Take white phosphorus for example, which is banned by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons for use as an incendiary weapon but has reportedly used by the US, Israel, Ukraine, Armenia, Taliban and Iraq under Saddam Hussein for such purpose.
>After all that — the beatings, the airstrikes, the war, the bombings — I want to live in a free Aleppo. I want to stay here, where I was born, all my life. It’s my right.
I really can't understand his reason to remain in Aleppo after 4 years of war. I could probably see his point at the beginning of the conflict, but once the war has been going on for such a long time, what is the point? He is playing Russian roulette every day; "It was an airstrike less than 100 meters behind ". Yes, the city is under siege, and currently it may be almost impossible to leave, but that doesn't seem to be his reason for staying.
Very similar to the people who had to be physically forced to evacuate during the recent floodings in the south of the US, because they felt that somehow they'd be okay.
Humans tend to be very irrational in times of duress, particularly when sentimental things are at stake, like the house you raised your family in.
I am from Turkey and I am really uncomfortable about the situation in Middle East. I can pretty say that there is only one reality, children die. There is no second reality here.
Thank God this is in the newspaper. Now Barack Obama will know about it. Maybe he can make a speech and end the war. I think there is a prize for that.
Because after four years of war the number of people in Eastern Aleppo isn't even close to the pre-war population. The media says, 250,000 to 300,000. Probably more like a tenth that currently.
Meanwhile there is 1 to 1.4 million people in Western Aleppo.
I do not know. And I have no real first person information on Syria except for one friend who is half Syrian who has some family in Homs[1]. However I'm dubious about the 300,000 number since it just seems to be reflexively repeated for years. And because sounds like the number of people escaping Eastern Aleppo is a small trickle. Despite that it's barely a functioning city at this point.
Also there is this.
> While aid groups estimate anywhere from 175,000 to 300,000 people still live in eastern rebel-held Aleppo, it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of figures from rebel territory. For example, Darayya, another besieged rebel-held city, was said to have more than 8,000 occupants. But last week, when government forces evacuated the entire town, they found fewer than 2,000 people still residing there.
It would work so well for them if they give up the western "Assad must go" motto. But they prefer to pick up some random kids and take photos, because they are ISIS and Al Nusra after all.
Every day we have new pictures of bloodied/dead Syrian children, articles describing the horrors of war and frantic warnings of a genocide that could happen any day now.
Now ask yourself: Why did you hear practically nothing about Syria for the past 4 years? Moreover, is anyone under the illusion that war isn't horrible? Did you think it was only strong, burly men getting killed before you saw that video of the kid in the ambulance?
I'm not trying to take away from this story, but I also see it for what it is: manipulative propaganda being pushed by a country that has a proxy war to win.
Finally, ask yourself this: Do you think all of the guns, bombs and technology we've provided to "freedom fighters" in Syria were only used to kill strong, burly men?