Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Corporate Media Beating The Drums Of War

Before the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq occurred, the mainstream corporate-owned media in this country consistently and insistently beat the drum for war. In story after story, they made the case (wrongly) that both of those wars were necessary for the defense of the United States. They even ignored the offer by the Taliban government to turn Osama bin Laden over to the international court at The Hague, to be put on trial for the 9/11 attack on America.

We now know that those invasions were a big mistake. They were attempts at regime-change, and had nothing to do with defending the American homeland. And they were both massive failures. We ousted corrupt and dictatorial regimes, and replaced them with similar regimes that were even more corrupt.

One would have hoped that the mainstream media had learned its lesson, and would view new efforts to go to war (or take military action against another country) with a jaundiced eye. One would have hoped they would now examine both sides of any new move toward war. But they are now showing they learned nothing. They are now again beating the drums of war -- this time in support of a military attack against Syria.

The media seems to have accepted the Obama administration argument that the Syrian government attacked rebels with chemical weapons. Secretary of State Kerry said he had proof of that attack. But what little proof he has offered only says there may have been a chemical attack. He has provided no proof that it was the Syrian government who did it.

Their argument is that the rebels don't have the capability to do a chemical attack. But we know that various factions of the rebels are aligned with al-Queda -- who has ties to Saudi Arabia (which does possess chemical weapons) and who has demonstrated in the past they are willing and able to commit atrocities. And the media is ignoring some reporting that the weapons used were weapons provided to some of the rebel factions by Saudi Arabia (and may have been accidentally exploded by rebels who didn't know how to properly handle them).

The media also seems to have just accepted (again) the argument that attacking Syria would somehow be in defense of the United States. No one has yet offered to explain just how this is true. They just claim that it is so. The media should be demanding that the government explain how the security of the United States is at stake if no attack is carried out -- but they have chosen to ignore that and just accept the government pronouncements (in spite of the fact that they make no sense).

And finally, the media is engaged in just two arguments -- should the attack be immediate or should it await a decision from Congress? They ignore the much more important question -- should there be an attack at all? The administration has admitted the attack will not cause a regime change, and that they don't want to cause a regime change. Why attack then -- just to show we're the biggest bully on the block? An attack that will make no difference in the civil war is meaningless, and should not be done -- since it will undoubtably result in the loss of life among innocent civilians (and create more enemies for the U.S.).

I am disappointed in this media drumbeat for war, but not very surprised. After all, a new war will boost the ratings for TV news and sell more newspapers -- and it will increase the profits for corporations. And sadly, increased ratings and profits is a good enough reason for the corporate-owned mainstream media to favor a new war.

3 comments:

  1. In 1946, the Strategic Bombing Survey, a study group which had been set up to study the effectiveness of US aerial attacks, concluded that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no effect on the outcome of WWII. Truman's Secretary of State, James Byrnes, was aware of this, and is on the record as saying that the bombings would "...put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war." In other words, a show of force, military posturing to show the Soviet Union how big our uranium and plutonium balls were.

    This time, Syria is standing in for Japan and Iran is the country our terms are being dicktated [sic] to.

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    1. Indeed. It was the USSR entering the war against Japan that caused the govt to surrender.
      However the Japanese emperor and the various admirals figured out in 1942 that they were going to lose. The reason they kept fighting was, according to translated Japanese documents, to make sure that the population realized that they had lost.
      Everything that I have reads over the last 50 years supports this. Fact is the nukes caused less damage than did the firebombing of Tokyo. I agree with your statement that we were making a statement to the USSR and just used Japan as the messenger

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  2. It has been stated that the attack was with a type of chemical related to Serin Gas which can be created very easily by even High School chemical students. It may be similar to the gas attack in Japan several years ago or as you say the misshandeling of weapons in the hands of people who did not know the risk. In any event the stupid idea continues to float like sewage from DC that to keep the Syrian government from killing their own citizens is to send missles that will kill more Syrian citizens. Only the DC thinking would come up with that idiot sollution to a problem that is NOT ours to solve since we have no reason to be the world police force. Call the Hague Court and give them all of the reports we have and let the court deal with this ... NO MORE WARS !!!!

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