Parry writes: "Official Washington's many false narratives about Russia and
Syria have gotten so tangled that they have become a danger to the struggle
against Sunni jihadist terrorism and conceivably a threat to the future of
the planet."
President Obama. (photo: Getty)
Tangled Threads of US False Narratives
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
20 November 15
Official Washingtons many false narratives about Russia and Syria have
gotten so tangled that they have become a danger to the struggle against
Sunni jihadist terrorism and conceivably a threat to the future of the
planet, a risk that Robert Parry explores.
One way to view Official Washington is to envision a giant bubble that
serves as a hothouse for growing genetically modified group thinks. Most
inhabitants of the bubble praise these creations as glorious and beyond
reproach, but a few dissenters note how strange and dangerous these products
are. Those critics, however, are then banished from the bubble, leaving
behind an evermore concentrated consensus.
This process could be almost comical as the many armchair warriors repeat
What Everyone Knows to Be True as self-justifying proof that more and more
wars and confrontations are needed but the United States is the most
powerful nation on earth and its fallacious group thinks are spreading a
widening arc of chaos and death around the globe.
We even have presidential candidates, especially among the Republicans but
including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, competing to
out-bellicose each other, treating an invasion of Syria as the least one can
do and some even bragging about how they might like to shoot down a few
Russian warplanes.
Though President Barack Obama has dragged his heels regarding some of the
more extreme proposals, he still falls in line with the group think,
continuing to insist on regime change in Syria (President Bashar al-Assad
must go), permitting the supply of sophisticated weapons to Sunni
jihadists (including TOW anti-tank missiles to Ahrar ash-Sham, a jihadist
group founded by Al Qaeda veterans and fighting alongside Al Qaedas Nusra
Front), and allowing his staff to personally insult Russian President
Vladimir Putin (having White House spokesman Josh Earnest in September
demean Putins posture for sitting with his legs apart during a Kremlin
meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).
Not surprisingly, I guess, Earnests prissy disapproval of what is commonly
called man spread didnt extend to Netanyahu who adopted the same open-leg
posture in the meeting with Putin on Sept. 21 and again in last weeks
meeting with Obama, who it should be noted sat with his legs primly
crossed.
This combination of tough talk, crude insults and reckless support of Al
Qaeda-connected jihadis (our guys) apparently has become de rigueur in
Official Washington, which remains dominated by the foreign policy ideology
of neoconservatives, who established the goal of regime change in Iraq,
Syria and Iran as early as 1996 and havent changed course since. [See
Consortiumnews.coms How Neocons Destabilized Europe.]
Shaping Narratives
Despite the catastrophic Iraq War based on neocon-driven falsehoods about
WMD and the complicit unthinking group think the neocons retained their
influence largely through an alliance with liberal interventionists and
their combined domination of major Washington think tanks, from the American
Enterprise Institute to the Brookings Institution, and the mainstream U.S.
news media, including The Washington Post and The New York Times.
This power base has allowed the neocons to continue shaping Official
Washingtons narratives regardless of what the actual facts are. For
instance, a Post editorial on Thursday repeated the claim that Assads
atrocities included use of chemical weapons, an apparent reference to the
now largely discredited claim that Assads forces were responsible for a
sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.
After the attack, there was a rush to judgment by the U.S. State Department
blaming Assads troops and leading Secretary of State John Kerry to threaten
retaliatory strikes against the Syrian military. But U.S. intelligence
analysts refused to sign on to the hasty conclusions, contributing to
President Obamas last-minute decision to hold off on a bombing campaign and
to accept Putins help in negotiating Assads surrender of all Syrian
chemical weapons (though Assad still denied a role in the sarin attack).
Subsequently, much of the slapdash case for bombing Syria fell apart. As
more evidence became available, it increasingly appeared that the sarin
attack was a provocation by Sunni jihadists, possibly aided by Turkish
intelligence, to trick the United States into destroying Assads military
and thus clearing the way for a Sunni jihadist victory.
We now know that the likely beneficiaries of such a U.S. attack would have
been Al Qaedas Nusra Front and the spinoff known as the Islamic State (also
called ISIS, ISIL or Daesh). But the Obama administration never formally
retracted its spurious sarin claims, thus allowing irresponsible media
outlets, such as The Washington Post, to continue citing the outdated group
think.
The same Post editorial denounced Assad for using barrel bombs against the
Sunni rebels who are seeking to overthrow his secular government, which is
viewed as the protector of Syrias minorities including Christians,
Alawites and Shiites who could face genocide if the Sunni extremists
prevail.
Though this barrel bomb theme has become a favorite talking point of both
the neocons and liberal human rights groups, its never been clear how
these homemade explosive devices shoved out of helicopters are any more
inhumane than the massive volumes of shock and awe ordnance, including
500-pound bombs, deployed by the U.S. military across the Middle East,
killing not only targeted fighters but innocent civilians.
Nevertheless, the refrain barrel bombs is accepted across Official
Washington as a worthy argument for launching devastating airstrikes against
Syrian government targets, even if such attacks clear the way for Al Qaedas
allies and offshoots gaining control of Damascus and unleashing even a worse
humanitarian cataclysm. [See Consortiumnews.coms Obamas Ludicrous Barrel
Bomb Theme.]
False-Narrative Knots
But it is now almost impossible for Official Washington to disentangle
itself from all the false narratives that the neocons and the liberal hawks
have spun in support of their various regime change strategies. Plus,
there are few people left inside the bubble who even recognize how false
these narratives are.
So, the American people are left with the mainstream U.S. news media
endlessly repeating storylines that are either completely false or highly
exaggerated. For instance, we hear again and again that the Russians
intervened in the Syrian conflict promising to strike only ISIS but then
broke their word by attacking Al Qaedas Nusra Front and our guys in Sunni
jihadist forces armed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the CIA.
Though you hear this narrative everywhere in Official Washington, no one
ever actually quotes Putin or another senior Russian official promising to
strike only at ISIS. In all the quotes that Ive seen, the Russians refer to
attacking terrorists, including but not limited to ISIS.
Unless Official Washington no longer regards Al Qaeda as a terrorist
organization a trial balloon that some neocons have floated then the
Putin-lied narrative makes no sense, even though every Important Person
Knows It to Be True, including Obamas neocon-leaning Defense Secretary
Ashton Carter.
The U.S. political and media big shots also mock the current Russian-Iranian
proposal for first stabilizing Syria and then letting the Syrian people
decide their own leadership through internationally observed democratic
elections.
Okay, you might say, whats wrong with letting the Syrian people go to the
polls and pick their own leaders? But that just shows that youre a
Russian-Iranian apologist who doesnt belong inside the bubble. The Right
Answer is that Assad Must Go! whatever the Syrian people might think.
Or, as the snarky neocon editors of The Washington Post wrote on Thursday,
Mr. Putin duly dispatched his foreign minister to talks in Vienna last
weekend on a Syrian political settlement. But Moscow and Tehran continue to
push for terms that would leave Mr. Assad in power for 18 months or longer,
while in theory a new constitution is drafted and elections organized.
Even a U.S. proposal that Mr. Assad be excluded from the eventual elections
was rejected, according to Iranian officials.
In other words, the U.S. government doesnt want the Syrian people to decide
whether Assad should be kicked out, an odd and contradictory stance since
President Obama keeps insisting that the vast majority of Syrians hate
Assad. If thats indeed the case, why not let free-and-fair elections prove
the point? Or is Obama so enthralled by the neocon insistence of regime
change for governments on Israels hit list that he doesnt want to take
the chance of the Syrian voters getting in the way?
Reality Tied Down
But truth and reality have become in Official Washington something like
Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There are so many strands of
lies and distortions that its impossible for sanity to rise up.
Another major factor in Americas crisis of false narratives relates to the
demonizing of Russia and Putin, a process that dates back in earnest to 2013
when Putin helped Obama sidetrack the neocon dream of bombing Syria and then
Putin compounded his offense by assisting Obama in getting Iran to constrain
its nuclear program, which derailed another neocon dream to bomb-bomb-bomb
Iran.
It became ominously clear to the neocons that this collaboration between the
two presidents might even lead to joint pressure on Israel to finally reach
a peace agreement with the Palestinians, a possibility that struck too close
to the heart of neocon thinking which, for the past two decades, has favored
using regime change in nearby countries to isolate and starve Lebanons
Hezbollah and Palestinian groups, giving Israel a free hand to do whatever
it wished.
So, this Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up and the point of
detonation was Ukraine on Russias border. Official Washingtons false
narratives around the Ukraine crisis are now also central to
neocon/liberal-hawk efforts to prevent meaningful coordination between Obama
and Putin in countering ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq.
Inside Official Washingtons bubble, the crisis in Ukraine is routinely
described as a simple case of Russian aggression against Ukraine,
including an invasion of Crimea.
If you relied on The New York Times or The Washington Post or the major
networks that repeat what the big newspapers say, you wouldnt know there
was a U.S.-backed coup in February 2014 that overthrew the elected Ukrainian
government of Viktor Yanukovych, even after he agreed to a European
compromise in which he surrendered many powers and accepted early elections.
Instead of letting that agreement go forward, right-wing ultra-nationalists,
including neo-Nazis operating inside the Maidan protests, overran government
buildings in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, causing Yanukovych and other leaders to
flee for their lives.
Behind the scenes, U.S. officials, such as neocon Assistant Secretary of
State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, had collaborated in the coup
plans and celebrated the victory by Nulands handpicked leaders, including
the post-coup Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom she referred to in an
earlier intercepted phone call as Yats is the guy.
Nor would you know that the people of Crimea had voted overwhelmingly for
President Yanukovych and after the coup voted overwhelmingly to get out
of the failed Ukrainian state and reunify with Russia.
The major U.S. news media twists that reality into a Russian invasion of
Crimea even though it was the strangest invasion ever because there were
no photos of Russian troops landing on the beaches or parachuting from the
skies. What the Post and the Times routinely ignored was that Russian troops
were already stationed inside Crimea as part of a basing agreement for the
Russian fleet at Sevastopol. They didnt need to invade.
And Crimeas referendum showing 96 percent approval for reunification with
Russia though hastily arranged was not the sham that the U.S.
mainstream media claimed. Indeed, the outcome has been reinforced by various
polls conducted by Western agencies since then.
The MH-17 Case
The demonization of Putin reached new heights after the July 17, 2014
shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine killing all
298 people onboard. Although substantial evidence and logic point to
elements of the Ukrainian military as responsible, Official Washingtons
rush to judgment blamed ethnic Russian rebels for firing the missile and
Putin for supposedly giving them a powerful Buk anti-aircraft missile
system.
That twisted narrative often relied on restating the irrelevant point that
the Buks are Russian-made, which was used to implicate Moscow but was
meaningless since the Ukrainian military also possessed Buk missiles. The
real question was who fired the missiles, not where they were made.
But the editors of the Post, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media
think you are very stupid, so they keep emphasizing that the Buks are
Russian-made. The more salient point is that U.S. intelligence with all
its satellite and other capabilities was unable both before and after the
shoot-down to find evidence that the Russians had given Buks to the
rebels.
Since the Buk missiles are 16-feet-long and hauled around by slow-moving
trucks, it is hard to believe that U.S. intelligence would not have spotted
them given the intense surveillance then in effect over eastern Ukraine.
A more likely scenario of the MH-17 shoot-down was that Ukraine moved
several of its Buk batteries to the frontlines, possibly fearing a Russian
airstrike, and the operators were on edge after a Ukrainian warplane was
shot down along the border on July 16, 2014, by an air-to-air missile
presumably fired by a Russian plane.
But after rushing out a white paper five days after the tragedy pointing
the finger at Moscow the U.S. government has refused to provide any
evidence or intelligence that might help pinpoint who fired the missile that
brought down MH-17.
Despite this remarkable failure by the U.S. government to cooperate with the
investigation, the mainstream U.S. media has found nothing suspicious about
this dog not barking and continues to cite the MH-17 case as another reason
to despise Putin.
How upside-down this Everything Is Putins Fault can be was displayed in a
New York Times news analysis by Steven Erlanger and Peter Baker on
Thursday when all the fundamental disagreements between Obama and Putin
were blamed on Putin.
Dividing them are the Russian annexation of Crimea and its meddling in
eastern Ukraine, Moscows efforts to demonize Washington and undermine
confidence in NATOs commitment to collective defense, and the Kremlins
support of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Erlanger and Baker wrote.
Helping ISIS
This tangle of false narratives is now tripping up the prospects of a
U.S.-French-Russian-Iranian alliance to take on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda
and other Sunni jihadist forces seeking to overthrow Syrias secular
government.
The neocon Washington Post, in particular, has been venomous about this
potential collaboration which while possibly the best chance to finally
resolve the horrific Syrian conflict would torpedo the neocons long-held
vision of imposed regime change in Syria.
In editorials, the Posts neocon editors also have displayed a stunning lack
of sympathy for the 224 Russian tourists and crew killed in what appears to
have been a terrorist bombing of a chartered plane over the Sinai in Egypt.
On Nov. 7, instead of expressing solidarity, the Posts editors ridiculed
Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for not rushing to a
judgment that it was an act of terrorism, instead insisting on first
analyzing the evidence. The Post also mocked the two leaders for failing to
vanquish the terrorists.
Or as the Posts editors put it: While Mr. Putin suspended Russian flights
on [Nov. 6], his spokesman was still insisting there was no reason to
conclude that there had been an act of terrorism.
While Western
governments worried about protecting their citizens, the Sissi and Putin
regimes were focused on defending themselves.
Both rulers have sold themselves as warriors courageously taking on the
Islamic State and its affiliates; both are using that fight as a pretext to
accomplish other ends, such as repressing peaceful domestic opponents and
distracting attention from declining living standards. On the actual
battlefield, both are failing.
Given the outpouring of sympathy that the United States received after the
9/11 attacks and the condolences that flooded France over the past week, it
is hard to imagine a more graceless reaction to a major terrorist attack
against innocent Russians.
As for the Russian hesitancy to jump to conclusions earlier this month, that
may have been partially wishful thinking but it surely is not an evil trait
to await solid evidence before reaching a verdict. Even the Posts editors
admitted that U.S. officials noted that as of Nov. 7 there was no
conclusive evidence that the plane was bombed.
But the Post couldnt wait to link the terrorist attack to Mr. Putins
Syrian adventure and hoped that it would inflict on Putin a potentially
grievous political wound. The Posts editors also piled on with the
gratuitous claim that Russian officials still deny the overwhelming
evidence that a Russian anti-aircraft missile downed a Malaysian airliner
over Ukraine last year. (There it is again, the attempt to dupe Post
readers with a reference to a Russian anti-aircraft missile.)
The Post seemed to take particular joy in the role of U.S. weapons killing
Syrian and Iranian soldiers. On Thursday, the Post wrote, Syrian and
Iranian troops have lost scores of Russian-supplied tanks and armored
vehicles to the rebels U.S.-made TOW missiles. Having failed to recapture
significant territory, the Russian mission appears doomed to quagmire or
even defeat in the absence of a diplomatic bailout.
Upping the Ante
The neocons determination to demonize Putin has upped the ante, turning
their Mideast obsession with regime change into a scheme for destabilizing
Russia and forcing regime change in Moscow, setting the stage for a
potential nuclear showdown that could end all life on the planet.
To listen to the rhetoric from most Republican candidates and Democratic
frontrunner Hillary Clinton, it is not hard to envision how all the tough
talk could take on a life of its own and lead to catastrophe. [See, for
instance, Philip Giraldis review of the war with Russia rhetoric
free-flowing on the campaign trail and around Official Washington.]
At this point, it may seem fruitless even naïve to suggest ways to
pierce the various group thinks and the bubble that sustains them. But a
counter-argument to the fake narratives is possible if some candidate seized
on the principle of an informed electorate as vital to democracy.
An argument for empowering citizens with facts is one that transcends
traditional partisan and ideological boundaries. Whether on the right, on
the left or in the center, Americans dont want to be treated like cattle
being herded by propaganda or strategic communication or whatever the
latest euphemism is for deception and manipulation.
So, a candidate could do the right thing and the smart thing by demanding
the release of as much U.S. intelligence information to cut this Gordian
knot of false narratives as possible. For instance, it is way past time to
declassify the 28 pages from the congressional 9/11 report addressing
alleged Saudi support for the hijackers. There also are surely more recent
intelligence estimates on the funding of Al Qaedas affiliates and
spin-offs, including ISIS.
If this information embarrasses some allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar
and Turkey so be it. If this history makes some past or present U.S.
president look bad, so be it. American elections are diminished, if not made
meaningless, when there is no informed electorate.
A presidential candidate also could press President Obama to disclose what
U.S. intelligence knows about other key turning points in the establishment
of false narratives, such as what did CIA analysts conclude about the Aug.
21, 2013 sarin attack and what do they know about the July 17, 2014
shoot-down of MH-17.
The pattern of the U.S. government exploiting emotional moments to gain an
edge in an info-war against some enemy and then going silent as more
evidence comes in has become a direct threat to American democracy and in
regards to nuclear-armed Russia possibly the planet.
Legitimate secrets, such as sources and methods, can be protected without
becoming an all-purpose cloak to cover up whatever facts dont fit with the
desired propaganda narrative that is then used to whip the public into some
mindless war frenzy.
However, at this point in the presidential campaign, no candidate is making
transparency an issue. Yet, after the deceptions of the Iraq War and with
the prospects of another war based on misleading or selective information in
Syria and potentially a nuclear showdown with Russia it seems to me that
the American people would respond positively to someone treating them with
the respect deserving of citizens in a democratic Republic.
________________________________________
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parrys trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes Americas Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
President Obama. (photo: Getty)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/19/tangled-threads-of-us-false-narratives
/https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/19/tangled-threads-of-us-false-narrative
s/
Tangled Threads of US False Narratives
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
20 November 15
Official Washingtons many false narratives about Russia and Syria have
gotten so tangled that they have become a danger to the struggle against
Sunni jihadist terrorism and conceivably a threat to the future of the
planet, a risk that Robert Parry explores.
ne way to view Official Washington is to envision a giant bubble that
serves as a hothouse for growing genetically modified group thinks. Most
inhabitants of the bubble praise these creations as glorious and beyond
reproach, but a few dissenters note how strange and dangerous these products
are. Those critics, however, are then banished from the bubble, leaving
behind an evermore concentrated consensus.
This process could be almost comical as the many armchair warriors repeat
What Everyone Knows to Be True as self-justifying proof that more and more
wars and confrontations are needed but the United States is the most
powerful nation on earth and its fallacious group thinks are spreading a
widening arc of chaos and death around the globe.
We even have presidential candidates, especially among the Republicans but
including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, competing to
out-bellicose each other, treating an invasion of Syria as the least one can
do and some even bragging about how they might like to shoot down a few
Russian warplanes.
Though President Barack Obama has dragged his heels regarding some of the
more extreme proposals, he still falls in line with the group think,
continuing to insist on regime change in Syria (President Bashar al-Assad
must go), permitting the supply of sophisticated weapons to Sunni
jihadists (including TOW anti-tank missiles to Ahrar ash-Sham, a jihadist
group founded by Al Qaeda veterans and fighting alongside Al Qaedas Nusra
Front), and allowing his staff to personally insult Russian President
Vladimir Putin (having White House spokesman Josh Earnest in September
demean Putins posture for sitting with his legs apart during a Kremlin
meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).
Not surprisingly, I guess, Earnests prissy disapproval of what is commonly
called man spread didnt extend to Netanyahu who adopted the same open-leg
posture in the meeting with Putin on Sept. 21 and again in last weeks
meeting with Obama, who it should be noted sat with his legs primly
crossed.
This combination of tough talk, crude insults and reckless support of Al
Qaeda-connected jihadis (our guys) apparently has become de rigueur in
Official Washington, which remains dominated by the foreign policy ideology
of neoconservatives, who established the goal of regime change in Iraq,
Syria and Iran as early as 1996 and havent changed course since. [See
Consortiumnews.coms How Neocons Destabilized Europe.]
Shaping Narratives
Despite the catastrophic Iraq War based on neocon-driven falsehoods about
WMD and the complicit unthinking group think the neocons retained their
influence largely through an alliance with liberal interventionists and
their combined domination of major Washington think tanks, from the American
Enterprise Institute to the Brookings Institution, and the mainstream U.S.
news media, including The Washington Post and The New York Times.
This power base has allowed the neocons to continue shaping Official
Washingtons narratives regardless of what the actual facts are. For
instance, a Post editorial on Thursday repeated the claim that Assads
atrocities included use of chemical weapons, an apparent reference to the
now largely discredited claim that Assads forces were responsible for a
sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.
After the attack, there was a rush to judgment by the U.S. State Department
blaming Assads troops and leading Secretary of State John Kerry to threaten
retaliatory strikes against the Syrian military. But U.S. intelligence
analysts refused to sign on to the hasty conclusions, contributing to
President Obamas last-minute decision to hold off on a bombing campaign and
to accept Putins help in negotiating Assads surrender of all Syrian
chemical weapons (though Assad still denied a role in the sarin attack).
Subsequently, much of the slapdash case for bombing Syria fell apart. As
more evidence became available, it increasingly appeared that the sarin
attack was a provocation by Sunni jihadists, possibly aided by Turkish
intelligence, to trick the United States into destroying Assads military
and thus clearing the way for a Sunni jihadist victory.
We now know that the likely beneficiaries of such a U.S. attack would have
been Al Qaedas Nusra Front and the spinoff known as the Islamic State (also
called ISIS, ISIL or Daesh). But the Obama administration never formally
retracted its spurious sarin claims, thus allowing irresponsible media
outlets, such as The Washington Post, to continue citing the outdated group
think.
The same Post editorial denounced Assad for using barrel bombs against the
Sunni rebels who are seeking to overthrow his secular government, which is
viewed as the protector of Syrias minorities including Christians,
Alawites and Shiites who could face genocide if the Sunni extremists
prevail.
Though this barrel bomb theme has become a favorite talking point of both
the neocons and liberal human rights groups, its never been clear how
these homemade explosive devices shoved out of helicopters are any more
inhumane than the massive volumes of shock and awe ordnance, including
500-pound bombs, deployed by the U.S. military across the Middle East,
killing not only targeted fighters but innocent civilians.
Nevertheless, the refrain barrel bombs is accepted across Official
Washington as a worthy argument for launching devastating airstrikes against
Syrian government targets, even if such attacks clear the way for Al Qaedas
allies and offshoots gaining control of Damascus and unleashing even a worse
humanitarian cataclysm. [See Consortiumnews.coms Obamas Ludicrous Barrel
Bomb Theme.]
False-Narrative Knots
But it is now almost impossible for Official Washington to disentangle
itself from all the false narratives that the neocons and the liberal hawks
have spun in support of their various regime change strategies. Plus,
there are few people left inside the bubble who even recognize how false
these narratives are.
So, the American people are left with the mainstream U.S. news media
endlessly repeating storylines that are either completely false or highly
exaggerated. For instance, we hear again and again that the Russians
intervened in the Syrian conflict promising to strike only ISIS but then
broke their word by attacking Al Qaedas Nusra Front and our guys in Sunni
jihadist forces armed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the CIA.
Though you hear this narrative everywhere in Official Washington, no one
ever actually quotes Putin or another senior Russian official promising to
strike only at ISIS. In all the quotes that Ive seen, the Russians refer to
attacking terrorists, including but not limited to ISIS.
Unless Official Washington no longer regards Al Qaeda as a terrorist
organization a trial balloon that some neocons have floated then the
Putin-lied narrative makes no sense, even though every Important Person
Knows It to Be True, including Obamas neocon-leaning Defense Secretary
Ashton Carter.
The U.S. political and media big shots also mock the current Russian-Iranian
proposal for first stabilizing Syria and then letting the Syrian people
decide their own leadership through internationally observed democratic
elections.
Okay, you might say, whats wrong with letting the Syrian people go to the
polls and pick their own leaders? But that just shows that youre a
Russian-Iranian apologist who doesnt belong inside the bubble. The Right
Answer is that Assad Must Go! whatever the Syrian people might think.
Or, as the snarky neocon editors of The Washington Post wrote on Thursday,
Mr. Putin duly dispatched his foreign minister to talks in Vienna last
weekend on a Syrian political settlement. But Moscow and Tehran continue to
push for terms that would leave Mr. Assad in power for 18 months or longer,
while in theory a new constitution is drafted and elections organized.
Even a U.S. proposal that Mr. Assad be excluded from the eventual elections
was rejected, according to Iranian officials.
In other words, the U.S. government doesnt want the Syrian people to decide
whether Assad should be kicked out, an odd and contradictory stance since
President Obama keeps insisting that the vast majority of Syrians hate
Assad. If thats indeed the case, why not let free-and-fair elections prove
the point? Or is Obama so enthralled by the neocon insistence of regime
change for governments on Israels hit list that he doesnt want to take
the chance of the Syrian voters getting in the way?
Reality Tied Down
But truth and reality have become in Official Washington something like
Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There are so many strands of
lies and distortions that its impossible for sanity to rise up.
Another major factor in Americas crisis of false narratives relates to the
demonizing of Russia and Putin, a process that dates back in earnest to 2013
when Putin helped Obama sidetrack the neocon dream of bombing Syria and then
Putin compounded his offense by assisting Obama in getting Iran to constrain
its nuclear program, which derailed another neocon dream to bomb-bomb-bomb
Iran.
It became ominously clear to the neocons that this collaboration between the
two presidents might even lead to joint pressure on Israel to finally reach
a peace agreement with the Palestinians, a possibility that struck too close
to the heart of neocon thinking which, for the past two decades, has favored
using regime change in nearby countries to isolate and starve Lebanons
Hezbollah and Palestinian groups, giving Israel a free hand to do whatever
it wished.
So, this Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up and the point of
detonation was Ukraine on Russias border. Official Washingtons false
narratives around the Ukraine crisis are now also central to
neocon/liberal-hawk efforts to prevent meaningful coordination between Obama
and Putin in countering ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq.
Inside Official Washingtons bubble, the crisis in Ukraine is routinely
described as a simple case of Russian aggression against Ukraine,
including an invasion of Crimea.
If you relied on The New York Times or The Washington Post or the major
networks that repeat what the big newspapers say, you wouldnt know there
was a U.S.-backed coup in February 2014 that overthrew the elected Ukrainian
government of Viktor Yanukovych, even after he agreed to a European
compromise in which he surrendered many powers and accepted early elections.
Instead of letting that agreement go forward, right-wing ultra-nationalists,
including neo-Nazis operating inside the Maidan protests, overran government
buildings in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, causing Yanukovych and other leaders to
flee for their lives.
Behind the scenes, U.S. officials, such as neocon Assistant Secretary of
State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, had collaborated in the coup
plans and celebrated the victory by Nulands handpicked leaders, including
the post-coup Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom she referred to in an
earlier intercepted phone call as Yats is the guy.
Nor would you know that the people of Crimea had voted overwhelmingly for
President Yanukovych and after the coup voted overwhelmingly to get out
of the failed Ukrainian state and reunify with Russia.
The major U.S. news media twists that reality into a Russian invasion of
Crimea even though it was the strangest invasion ever because there were
no photos of Russian troops landing on the beaches or parachuting from the
skies. What the Post and the Times routinely ignored was that Russian troops
were already stationed inside Crimea as part of a basing agreement for the
Russian fleet at Sevastopol. They didnt need to invade.
And Crimeas referendum showing 96 percent approval for reunification with
Russia though hastily arranged was not the sham that the U.S.
mainstream media claimed. Indeed, the outcome has been reinforced by various
polls conducted by Western agencies since then.
The MH-17 Case
The demonization of Putin reached new heights after the July 17, 2014
shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine killing all
298 people onboard. Although substantial evidence and logic point to
elements of the Ukrainian military as responsible, Official Washingtons
rush to judgment blamed ethnic Russian rebels for firing the missile and
Putin for supposedly giving them a powerful Buk anti-aircraft missile
system.
That twisted narrative often relied on restating the irrelevant point that
the Buks are Russian-made, which was used to implicate Moscow but was
meaningless since the Ukrainian military also possessed Buk missiles. The
real question was who fired the missiles, not where they were made.
But the editors of the Post, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media
think you are very stupid, so they keep emphasizing that the Buks are
Russian-made. The more salient point is that U.S. intelligence with all
its satellite and other capabilities was unable both before and after the
shoot-down to find evidence that the Russians had given Buks to the
rebels.
Since the Buk missiles are 16-feet-long and hauled around by slow-moving
trucks, it is hard to believe that U.S. intelligence would not have spotted
them given the intense surveillance then in effect over eastern Ukraine.
A more likely scenario of the MH-17 shoot-down was that Ukraine moved
several of its Buk batteries to the frontlines, possibly fearing a Russian
airstrike, and the operators were on edge after a Ukrainian warplane was
shot down along the border on July 16, 2014, by an air-to-air missile
presumably fired by a Russian plane.
But after rushing out a white paper five days after the tragedy pointing
the finger at Moscow the U.S. government has refused to provide any
evidence or intelligence that might help pinpoint who fired the missile that
brought down MH-17.
Despite this remarkable failure by the U.S. government to cooperate with the
investigation, the mainstream U.S. media has found nothing suspicious about
this dog not barking and continues to cite the MH-17 case as another reason
to despise Putin.
How upside-down this Everything Is Putins Fault can be was displayed in a
New York Times news analysis by Steven Erlanger and Peter Baker on
Thursday when all the fundamental disagreements between Obama and Putin
were blamed on Putin.
Dividing them are the Russian annexation of Crimea and its meddling in
eastern Ukraine, Moscows efforts to demonize Washington and undermine
confidence in NATOs commitment to collective defense, and the Kremlins
support of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Erlanger and Baker wrote.
Helping ISIS
This tangle of false narratives is now tripping up the prospects of a
U.S.-French-Russian-Iranian alliance to take on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda
and other Sunni jihadist forces seeking to overthrow Syrias secular
government.
The neocon Washington Post, in particular, has been venomous about this
potential collaboration which while possibly the best chance to finally
resolve the horrific Syrian conflict would torpedo the neocons long-held
vision of imposed regime change in Syria.
In editorials, the Posts neocon editors also have displayed a stunning lack
of sympathy for the 224 Russian tourists and crew killed in what appears to
have been a terrorist bombing of a chartered plane over the Sinai in Egypt.
On Nov. 7, instead of expressing solidarity, the Posts editors ridiculed
Putin and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for not rushing to a
judgment that it was an act of terrorism, instead insisting on first
analyzing the evidence. The Post also mocked the two leaders for failing to
vanquish the terrorists.
Or as the Posts editors put it: While Mr. Putin suspended Russian flights
on [Nov. 6], his spokesman was still insisting there was no reason to
conclude that there had been an act of terrorism.
While Western
governments worried about protecting their citizens, the Sissi and Putin
regimes were focused on defending themselves.
Both rulers have sold themselves as warriors courageously taking on the
Islamic State and its affiliates; both are using that fight as a pretext to
accomplish other ends, such as repressing peaceful domestic opponents and
distracting attention from declining living standards. On the actual
battlefield, both are failing.
Given the outpouring of sympathy that the United States received after the
9/11 attacks and the condolences that flooded France over the past week, it
is hard to imagine a more graceless reaction to a major terrorist attack
against innocent Russians.
As for the Russian hesitancy to jump to conclusions earlier this month, that
may have been partially wishful thinking but it surely is not an evil trait
to await solid evidence before reaching a verdict. Even the Posts editors
admitted that U.S. officials noted that as of Nov. 7 there was no
conclusive evidence that the plane was bombed.
But the Post couldnt wait to link the terrorist attack to Mr. Putins
Syrian adventure and hoped that it would inflict on Putin a potentially
grievous political wound. The Posts editors also piled on with the
gratuitous claim that Russian officials still deny the overwhelming
evidence that a Russian anti-aircraft missile downed a Malaysian airliner
over Ukraine last year. (There it is again, the attempt to dupe Post
readers with a reference to a Russian anti-aircraft missile.)
The Post seemed to take particular joy in the role of U.S. weapons killing
Syrian and Iranian soldiers. On Thursday, the Post wrote, Syrian and
Iranian troops have lost scores of Russian-supplied tanks and armored
vehicles to the rebels U.S.-made TOW missiles. Having failed to recapture
significant territory, the Russian mission appears doomed to quagmire or
even defeat in the absence of a diplomatic bailout.
Upping the Ante
The neocons determination to demonize Putin has upped the ante, turning
their Mideast obsession with regime change into a scheme for destabilizing
Russia and forcing regime change in Moscow, setting the stage for a
potential nuclear showdown that could end all life on the planet.
To listen to the rhetoric from most Republican candidates and Democratic
frontrunner Hillary Clinton, it is not hard to envision how all the tough
talk could take on a life of its own and lead to catastrophe. [See, for
instance, Philip Giraldis review of the war with Russia rhetoric
free-flowing on the campaign trail and around Official Washington.]
At this point, it may seem fruitless even naïve to suggest ways to
pierce the various group thinks and the bubble that sustains them. But a
counter-argument to the fake narratives is possible if some candidate seized
on the principle of an informed electorate as vital to democracy.
An argument for empowering citizens with facts is one that transcends
traditional partisan and ideological boundaries. Whether on the right, on
the left or in the center, Americans dont want to be treated like cattle
being herded by propaganda or strategic communication or whatever the
latest euphemism is for deception and manipulation.
So, a candidate could do the right thing and the smart thing by demanding
the release of as much U.S. intelligence information to cut this Gordian
knot of false narratives as possible. For instance, it is way past time to
declassify the 28 pages from the congressional 9/11 report addressing
alleged Saudi support for the hijackers. There also are surely more recent
intelligence estimates on the funding of Al Qaedas affiliates and
spin-offs, including ISIS.
If this information embarrasses some allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar
and Turkey so be it. If this history makes some past or present U.S.
president look bad, so be it. American elections are diminished, if not made
meaningless, when there is no informed electorate.
A presidential candidate also could press President Obama to disclose what
U.S. intelligence knows about other key turning points in the establishment
of false narratives, such as what did CIA analysts conclude about the Aug.
21, 2013 sarin attack and what do they know about the July 17, 2014
shoot-down of MH-17.
The pattern of the U.S. government exploiting emotional moments to gain an
edge in an info-war against some enemy and then going silent as more
evidence comes in has become a direct threat to American democracy and in
regards to nuclear-armed Russia possibly the planet.
Legitimate secrets, such as sources and methods, can be protected without
becoming an all-purpose cloak to cover up whatever facts dont fit with the
desired propaganda narrative that is then used to whip the public into some
mindless war frenzy.
However, at this point in the presidential campaign, no candidate is making
transparency an issue. Yet, after the deceptions of the Iraq War and with
the prospects of another war based on misleading or selective information in
Syria and potentially a nuclear showdown with Russia it seems to me that
the American people would respond positively to someone treating them with
the respect deserving of citizens in a democratic Republic.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parrys trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes Americas Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
