America’s illegal war in
the Syrian city of Raqqa has already killed over 1,800 civilians, according to the monitoring group
Airwars. At the time the offensive was launched in June, the U.S. was aware that
some 200,000 civilians were trapped. In that first week of operations alone,
the U.N. accused the Trump
administration of killing 300 civilians in less than seven days’ worth of
bombing.
This trend has continued over
the course of the last few months, and as one might imagine, Syrian
infrastructure has been completely decimated. Rather than label this assault
for what it is — namely, a grave crime against humanity encompassing an endless
supply of potential war crimes — the media appears to have chosen a different
tack.
“Looking
at photographs of the ruined, desolate streets of what was once the Islamic
State’s capital of Raqqa is a reminder of the overwhelming, pitilessly
effective military power of the United States,” wrote the Washington Post’s David Ignatius in an op-ed
published Thursday.
That was merely the opening
sentence. Ignatius continued:
“The
heaps of rubble in Raqqa that once housed terrorists and torturers convey a
bedrock lesson, as valid now as in 1945: It’s a mistake to provoke the
United States. It may take the country a while to respond to a threat,
but once the machine of U.S. power is engaged, it’s relentless — so long as the
political will exists to sustain it.” [emphasis added]
Who exactly provoked the United States here? The people who have
been hardest hit are clearly civilians who happened to live in Raqqa. What
crime did these people commit?
And
if Ignatius is referring solely to the terror group ISIS, at what stage did
ISIS “provoke” the U.S.? If anything, ISIS was quite content trying to topple
the governments of Iraq and Syria and set up their own Islamic caliphate back
in 2014. That is why the Syrian government has been so heavily involved in
fighting ISIS over the last few years: ISIS directly threatens its territory.
Somehow, the U.S. found itself embroiled in yet another Middle Eastern conflict
that didn’t directly affect the U.S. government or its people.
Nevertheless,
Russia used this opportunity to turn the tables against the U.S. after western
media lambasted Russia’s
assault on Aleppo at the end of last year. On Sunday, Russia accused the
U.S.-led coalition in Syria of wiping the city of Raqqa “off the face of the
earth” with carpet bombing similar to what the United States and Britain did to
Germany in 1945.
However,
unlike the U.S., Russia had a legal basis to
begin its military operations within the country, whether or not it committed
war crimes in the process.
David Ignatius is right about
one thing and one thing only – the media is almost all but silent on what is
going on in Raqqa. However, Ignatius wrongly attributes this to the “inevitable
nature of American force” that has prompted so little discussion. In reality,
it’s likely this topic isn’t being discussed because of the numerous
illegalities surrounding it.
The
people of Raqqa won’t forget what the U.S. has illegally done to their homes.
In July, one witness told Reuters he found several of his neighbors dead on
the street. Cats were eating their bodies. It later emerged that
American-led airstrikes were wiping out entire families. This is not how you
defeat terrorism. This is how you perpetuate it.
Corporate
media would do well to separate itself from this violent and grotesque criminal
behavior, yet it continues to endorse it. If RT released
op-eds that glorified Russian crimes to the extent that western media is doing
right now, the Washington Post would
have a field day.
This is not the hallmark of
an independent press, but rather, one that serves horrifyingly violent
policies. An independent media would question both Russia’s and America’s roles
in the Middle East, objectively distinguish between the two, and demand both entities
be held accountable for failing to protect civilians when that evidence arises.
All
that being said, Airwars has more or less put its monitoring of
Russian airstrikes on hold this year as the U.S. has continued to surpass
Russia in its civilian death toll by a long shot.
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