In 2003, George W. Bush and Anthony Blair sold their illegal war to a frothing mainstream media on the basis that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (lie), Iraqis wanted the West liberate them from their government (lie…even among Saddam opponents), Iraq was a hotbed of terrorism (outrageous lie) and Iraq directly threatened world stability (insane lie).
Many people who opposed the war and its accompanying lies carried placards with slogans including, ‘No blood for oil’, ‘Not in my name’, ‘Bush lied Iraqis died’ and so on.
Now all but the most out of touch ideologues agree that the Iraq war was a disaster, this includes the British establishment’s own conclusions on the war as detailed in The Chilcot Report.
Yet in 2011 when France, Britain and America illegally invaded Libya there was hardly anything said from the people who just a few years earlier shouted ‘no blood for oil’.
More recently, far from just not opposing Western, Turkish, Saudi and Qatari intervention in Syria, many on the so-called ‘progressive’ end of the spectrum are repeating the same neo-con lies about Syria that Bush and Blair did about Iraq.
They are saying that they support regime change in Syria just as Bush and Blair did in Iraq. They are accusing the Syrian government of committing both crimes it has not committed and crimes that it logistically and materially could not commit. They refer to the Syrian government as a terrorist regime just as Bush and Blair did with Saddam. Both neglect to realise that both Ba’athist leaders were – and in the case of President Assad still is – secularist and sworn enemies of actual radical Islamic terrorists.
So in just over a decade people on the so-called liberal left have gone from protesting the imperialist crusade against Iraq to favouring one against Syria.
Neo-conism has truly infected the clear thinking of once seemingly sane individuals.
But even more importantly, because Syrians have the web-based tools to tell their side of the story more than Iraqis did in 2003, the media has become even more belligerent in spreading outright lies about Syria. They are even happy to defame the work and personal integrity of journalists telling the actual Syrian side of the story, people like Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett.
By contrast in 2003, Dan Rather of CBS engaged in a surprisingly calm interview with Saddam Hussein.
Things have got worse not better in the parallel universe of mainstream media. Like all dying beasts, they let off the most frighting howls before they collapse.
It’s just a pity that they brainwashed so many of the same people who in 2003 seemed to have a much clearer idea about international law and moral justice.
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