Friday, June 01, 2012

War as distraction

Shashank Joshi (CNN) wonders in an online column, "Is Syria becoming the new Iraq?"



People have stopped pretending to care about Syrians?


I didn't realize that bombings in Syria were treated with silence by the US State Dept and White House as happened yesterday?

Or that the refugees were forgotten, ignored and betrayed?

That one US administration's broken promises  had given way to another  US administration's broken promises.

Nor did I realize that  the US ousted one leader only to replace him with a more compliant tyrant?

Or that trillions of US tax dollars had been shipped overseas, forever now lost in the quagmire?

I wasn't aware that an illegal war was responsible for the deaths of over a million of the native population as well as the deaths of 4488 US service members.

No one told me that weapons foreigners brought into the country were so toxic (and illegal) that the country was now plagued with various birth defects and cancers.

That thugs the US supported to strike fear in the population had destroyed women's rights?

Or that a US State Dept annual report last month and a UNESCO report found that under the US-installed puppet human rights continued to be near non-existent.

I must have missed the memo explaining that the US press in Syria had pretty much all chosen to leave in 2008 because it was too expensive to continue coverage?

Certainly no one ever explained to me how the same US press could spend so much time and money starting an illegal war but would feel no obligation to report what that war resulted in.

Iraq like Syria?

Only in that the same shadow motives that wanted the US in Iraq want the US in Syria and you better believe that, once the US 'solves' things there, the press coverage immediately vanishes because the truth of illegal wars are rarely told by the press.

If the truth ever was widely told, more people would be pointing out that the US government's drive to 'help' hasn't helped Iraqis or Afghans or Libyans or Haitians . . . all the way back to the Native Americans.  But surely, somehow, that's an aberration and not a pattern, right?  Keep kidding yourself.  And continue focusing on 'solving' the problems of another country to avoid focusing on the problems in our country and the problems our own country has caused in so many others.


I picked the morning paper off the floor
It was full of other people's little wars
Wouldn't they like their peace
Don't we get bored
And we call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence
-- "The Three Great Stimulants," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her Dog Eat Dog






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