In September 2015 Russian air forces began hammering ISIS in Syria at the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Two years later the world’s most dreaded terror has been all but eradicated. This year the world has received one of the best Christmas presents ever. Unfortunately, Ebenezer Scrooge either wants to take credit for the gift, or steal the gift back. Here’s the short story of how the world is being SCROOGED this holiday season.
On September 24th I framed on my personal blog how Israel and the US coalition were likely flying air cover for ISIL (ISIS) over Kurdistan and eastern Syria. In an earlier report me and my colleague Holger Eekhof had suggested the Russian Ministry of Defense should televise via YouTube missions against jihadists in Syria in order to prove the coalition non-mission. On September 30th RT began rebroadcasting Russian Ministry of Defense YouTube broadcasts of the destruction of ISIL.
The ministry’s uploads were a devastating blow to the Obama White House on social media channels, but of course the mainstream media under-played the significance. Initially, The New York Times and others tried to cover for the White House and the US led coalition by diffusion. A story September 30th claimed Russia’s target was not ISIL, but “taking on everybody fighting Assad” instead. Veteran reporters Helene Cooper, Michael R. Gordon, and Neil MacFARQUHAR cited the now notorious liar, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter who said:
“By supporting Assad and seemingly taking on everybody fighting Assad Russia is taking on the whole rest of the country that’s fighting Assad. That’s why the Russian position is doomed to fail.”
As we can see now, MacFARQUHAR and his associates, the former Secretary of Defense, and The New York Times by association, were proven to be idiots and/or liars when Vladimir Putin’s forces eradicated ISIL. The fact the NYTs and others have not printed 10,000 retractions since Russia’s air forces were pulled back the other day tells me there’s no going back for western journalism. After Russia exposed the US coalition and Israel’s proxy war to daylight, the civilian casualty PR program began. In that one NYTs piece there’s all the evidence of State Department-media collusion anybody will ever need. Fast forwarding to today we find Eric Schmitt re-creating the fantasy that the coalition has anything whatsoever to do with defeating the remains of ISIL in eastern Syria. The world’s most trusted (formerly) news source inserts a picture of Defense James Mattis and Central Command Commander Gen. Joseph Votel underneath the catchy title: “The Hunt for ISIS Pivots to Remaining Pockets in Syria.”
The overall effect for this analyst is like watching a formerly credible source attempt to rework history. MacFARQUHAR and all the others should either reframe their arguments, print retractions, or risk being totally ignored and shamed. What the reporters do manage to reveal for us is the fact the west considers Russia, Syria, and Iran “rivals” – the riveting lie the American public is being sold is revealed in no uncertain terms in Schmitt’s piece:
“The three-year American campaign has largely achieved its goal of reclaiming territory in Syria and Iraq, and the Islamic State’s religious state, or caliphate, appears all but gone.”
And within the New York Times media campaign to assist the coalition there’s a preview of the US/Israeli proxy war against Assad. General Joseph L. Votel, who’s head of United States Central Command, foretells of the new Pentagon strategy to create an anti-Assad guerilla force. Speaking of the US backed jihadists, Donald Trump’s top general in the region said recently:
“As they lose the caliphate’s physical terrain, they’ll adapt guerrilla tactics. ISIS has been beat up pretty bad. But this is a different kind of organization so we don’t know what they might try to add. They’ve been very adaptive.”
Helping the anti-Assad rebels make this metamorphosis is what is known as an “option” to the new breed of hegemony warrior. And judging from the mainstream’s reluctance to broadcast or print the truth of Russia having obliterated the jihadists, we can only assume the worst for Syria and the region.
To sum up, my dismay over the misinformation and outright lies from western media matches that of most experts involved. The unwitting public is being sold the most pretentious fallacy ever unleashed on US citizens. The people are expected to totally ignore the iron clad obvious, that America has created this mess in the Middle East. We are expected to believe that for over a year American Reaper drones, U-2 and other spy planes, Air Force and Navy fighters and bombers, satellite intelligence and intelligence from on the ground utterly failed to make a dent in ISIL (Daesh or whatever) until Putin’s forces began hammering ISIL oil trucks on YouTube. And now that the Syrians, Iranians, and Russians have destroyed Al Qaeda and ISIL, the US led Coalition wants to take credit. What’s more amazing for me is the fact there is no hiding the truth of these matters!
Finally, the strategy of removing Syria’s Assad from power remains. Western media from Voice of America to ABC report this week on US backed “rebels” refusing to attend a Russia hosted peace talk in Sochi, in preference to a U.N.-led Geneva process that would almost certainly lead to some sort of partitioning of Syria, or a kangaroo court to start some election fiasco. And at the same moment Syrian refugees begin the journey home, Donald Trump’s Middle East strategy is to reinforce Israel’s bid to reboot the Middle East. A paragraph from Trump’s new National Security Strategy (pg. 49) tells the world these conflicts will only get worse for the near future:
“For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from radical jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems.”
We have the “strategy” and the future laid out for us. From UN Ambassador Nicky Haley’s “taking names” idiocy over the Jerusalem capital issue, to the steadfast lying from The New York Times and other western media – there’s not a glimmer of hope for peace on the planet anytime soon. And as an America, we soon have to come to terms with the reality of all this. That is, the apathy and ignorance of the American people, and of the people of all “coalition” nations, is where the ultimate blame rests. If you still read The New York Times or watch CNN at all, you may be a big part of the problem. The truth of world chaos may be – we SCROOGED ourselves.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”