{"id":195660,"date":"2021-09-27T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=195660"},"modified":"2024-09-23T14:38:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T13:38:54","slug":"the-u-s-may-have-lost-the-military-war-in-syria-but-has-won-the-propaganda-war-at-home-by-portraying-its-murderous-invasion-as-a-moral-crusade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/09\/the-u-s-may-have-lost-the-military-war-in-syria-but-has-won-the-propaganda-war-at-home-by-portraying-its-murderous-invasion-as-a-moral-crusade\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. May Have Lost the Military War in Syria, but Has Won the Propaganda War at Home by Portraying Its Murderous Invasion as a Moral Crusade"},"content":{"rendered":"

As It Did with Castro in Cuba and Noriega in Panama, the \u201cMighty Wurlitzer\u201d of U.S. Propaganda Defused Antiwar Sentiment by Painting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a Brutal Animal Who Had to Be Removed<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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[Source: theredphoenixapl.org]<\/p><\/div>22 Sep 2021 – <\/em>In 1991, famed MIT linguist Noam Chomsky published a political pamphlet called Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda<\/em>, which provided an examination of U.S. war propaganda and its success from Woodrow Wilson\u2019s World War I Creel Commission to Bush Sr.\u2019s war on Iraq.<\/p>\n

According to Chomsky, \u201cPropaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.\u201d It lulls the masses into acquiescence while preserving the illusion of an open society.<\/p>\n

U.S. propaganda had been especially effective because it is subtly designed to arouse moral outrage against the government\u2019s targets by playing up their human rights abuses\u2014real or imagined.<\/p>\n

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[Source: amazon.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chomsky\u2019s analysis applies particularly well to the Syrian conflict, where U.S. propaganda has been so good that Chomsky himself at times was taken in by it.<\/p>\n

For example, in a Democracy Now!<\/em> interview on April 5, 2017, Chomsky called the Bashar al-Assad regime \u201c[a] moral disgrace carrying out horrendous acts, the Russians with them.\u201d<\/a> This is the official U.S. position, which obscures the horrendous acts committed by Assad\u2019s opponents\u2014jihadist terrorists with whom the U.S. has been allied <\/a> since the war began.[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

It is revealing that the majority of Syrians\u2014whom the U.S. is purportedly there to protect against the evil Assad\u2014do not consider Assad to be a \u201cmoral disgrace.\u201d A 2012 poll found that 55 percent supported him<\/a> and tens of thousands were mobilized for pro-government rallies when the Arab Spring protests broke out<\/a> in March 2011.<\/p>\n

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Pro-Assad rally after Arab Spring protests broke out in Daraa in 2011. [Source: Aljazeera.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chomsky was among the signatories to a March 2021 letter decrying the emergence of \u201cpro-Assad allegiances in the name of anti-imperialism among some who normally identify as progressive and left\u201c<\/a> and \u201cspread of manipulative disinformation that routinely deflects attention away from the well-documented abuses of Assad and his allies,\u201d<\/a> and results in alignment with the \u201cgovernments of Russia and China.\u201d<\/a>[2]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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Noam Chomsky [Source: salon.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chomsky also signed a petition published in the New York Review of Books<\/em><\/a> that bought the deceitful and morally hollow U.S. pretense<\/a> that it needed<\/a> to stay in Syria to protect the Kurds<\/a> from a Turkish invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the truth is that the U.S. has used and then treacherously deserted the Kurds multiple times\u2014not just in Syria but throughout the Middle East\u2014as Chomsky himself has written about. After luring the Kurds into supporting its policies with insincere promises of promoting an independent Kurdish nation, the U.S. callously abandoned them to slaughter by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, by Assad in Syria, and most recently by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.<\/p>\n

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\"Map\n\nDescription
[Source: nytimes.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

World War in Syria<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A.B. Abrams has published a new book, World War in Syria: Global Conflict on Middle Eastern Battlefields<\/em><\/a> (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2021), which effectively debunks U.S. state propaganda about Syria, and shows the war for what it is\u2014a regime-change operation directed by the U.S. waged via proxy that evolved into a world war that gave an opportunity for many different countries to settle geopolitical scores.<\/p>\n

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[Source: amazon.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The major players in the conflict included Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, Israel, and the United States which armed and financed jihadist insurgents seeking to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n

On the other side, Iran, Russia, Iraq, Hezbollah (Lebanese insurgent group) and North Korea provided military support to the Assad regime that enabled its survival.<\/p>\n

The official narrative in the U.S. cast Assad as a butcher and the insurgents favorably.<\/p>\n

The U.S. claimed it was arming \u201cmoderate rebels\u201d to oust Assad\u2014though most of the rebels were in fact Islamic jihadists.<\/p>\n

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[Source: theduran.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The U.S. had long sought Assad\u2019s removal because he had ruled over an independent state that was outside the Western sphere of influence and allied with Iran, which the U.S. wanted to isolate.<\/p>\n

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Hafez al-Assad, Syria\u2019s ruler from 1970 to 2000, with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat in the 1970s. The trio were considered enemies of the U.S. as Arab nationalists and leftists. [Source: limacharlienews.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Assad further had resisted U.S. designs to build an oil pipeline that could undercut supply routes from Russia.<\/p>\n

After 9\/11, Washington planned to attack and destroy the governments in seven Middle East countries, with the final target being Iran.<\/p>\n

As of 2021, with Ba\u2019athist Iraq toppled, Lebanon on the verge of collapse, Hezbollah militarily stretched and the Chinese and Russian friendly governments of Libya and Sudan violently overthrown with Western backing, this strategy had largely succeeded.<\/p>\n

Colonial and Neo-Colonial Past<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Syria gained its independence from France in April 1946 after its people had endured years of French occupation and terror.<\/p>\n

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Syrians celebrate Independence Day on April 17, 1946. [Source: twitter.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\"Shukri
Shukri al-Quwatli [Source: wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In 1948, Syria waged a war, along with Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, against Jewish settlers in Palestine who established the State of Israel, which included territory historically considered part of Syria.<\/p>\n

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Husni al-Zaim [Source: wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Multiple coups and countercoups were launched in Syria over the next 22 years.<\/p>\n

The first, in 1949, was engineered by the CIA against President Shukri al-Quwatli, who was targeted because of his lack of enthusiasm for the Trans-Arabian pipeline, which was intended to transport Saudi Arabian oil to Europe through Syrian territory.<\/p>\n

Quwatli\u2019s successor, a general with a \u201cstrong pro-French orientation\u201d named Husni al-Zaim, ran what Pentagon cables described as an \u201carmy-supported dictatorship with a \u201cstrong anti-Soviet attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

His government approved the pipeline in its first week in power, but was overthrown five months later by colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, whose short-lived administration was toppled by another colonel, Adib Shishakli in December.<\/p>\n

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