
By Caitlin Johnstone
On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.
Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases.
Here’s this from The Washington Post:
The Biden administration conducted an airstrike against alleged Iranian-linked fighters in Syria on Thursday, signaling its intent to push back against violence believed to be sponsored by Tehran.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the attack, the first action ordered by the Biden administration to push back against alleged Iranian-linked violence in Iraq and Syria, on a border control point in eastern Syria was “authorized in response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats.”
He said the facilities were used by Iranian-linked militias including Kaitib Hezbollah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.
The operation follows the latest serious attack on U.S. locations in Iraq that American officials have attributed to Iranian-linked groups operating in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this month, a rocket attack in northern Iraq killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member there.
So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force. And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.
This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.
The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.
[…]
Via https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/02/26/us-bombs-syria-and-ridiculously-claims-self-defense/
Yesyesyesyesyes, and yes again. The US military empire needs to butt out of the rest of the world’s affairs, even though the US believes it has the right to occupy any country with resources it might be able to steal. I was thinking today that every dictator (or group of dictators) depends on their military might to force their way into areas where they don’t belong. Think Julius Caesar, who promised his soldiers land and slaves for their allegiance. Think about every empire since then and their use of military force to insure their dominance, including the British Empire, and its testosterone-poisoned ideological descendant, the US of A.
The US “Commander-in-Chief” is using his delegated power to further the empire George Washington and his sidekick–Alexander Hamilton–envisioned for this vast land of almost infinite resources, but their descendants have wasted, exported, or poisoned those resources so need to find new lands to destroy.
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All excellent points. I find it hard to believe anyone still buys this foolishness.
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Tubularsock finds it hard to believe that this story is even discussed any more. This is exactly the regular stated policy so why is it considered “news”?
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Tube, you’re much further advanced than most of us.
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Tube,
Same old same old is not news, but stories like this prevent people from looking at what other shenanigans the US is up to. It has its greedy fingers in lots of pies.
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Reblogged this on Muunyayo.
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Reblogged this on The Free.
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