Posted on 10/21/2016 10:52:37 AM PDT by Lorianne
As the U.S.-backed offensive in Mosul, Iraq, begins, the mainstream U.S. media readies the American people to blame the terrorists for civilian casualties but the opposite rules apply to Syria’s Aleppo ___ Note how differently The New York Times prepares the American public for civilian casualties from the new U.S.-backed Iraqi government assault on the city of Mosul to free it from the Islamic State, compared to the unrelenting condemnation of the Russian-backed Syrian government assault on neighborhoods of east Aleppo held by Al Qaeda.
In the case of Mosul, the million-plus residents are not portrayed as likely victims of American airstrikes and Iraqi government ground assaults, though surely many will die during the offensive. Instead, the civilians are said to be eagerly awaiting liberation from the Islamic State terrorists and their head-chopping brutality.
“Mosul’s residents are hoarding food and furtively scrawling resistance slogans on walls,” writes Times’ veteran war correspondent Rod Nordland about this week’s launch of the U.S.-backed government offensive. “Those forces will fight to enter a city where for weeks the harsh authoritarian rule of the Islamic State … has sought to crack down on a population eager to either escape or rebel, according to interviews with roughly three dozen people from Mosul. …
“Just getting out of Mosul had become difficult and dangerous: Those who were caught faced million-dinar fines, unless they were former members of the Iraqi Army or police, in which case the punishment was beheading. … Graffiti and other displays of dissidence against the Islamic State were more common in recent weeks, as were executions when the vandals were caught.”
The Times article continues: “Mosul residents chafed under social codes banning smoking and calling for splashing acid on body tattoos, summary executions of perceived opponents, whippings of those who missed prayers or trimmed their beards, and destroying ‘un-Islamic’ historical monuments.”
So, the message is clear: if the inevitable happens and the U.S.-backed offensive kills a number of Mosul’s civilians, including children, The New York Times’ readers have been hardened to accept this “collateral damage” as necessary to free the city from blood-thirsty extremists. The fight to crush these crazies is worth it, even if there are significant numbers of civilians killed in the “cross-fire.”
And we’ve seen similar mainstream media treatment of other U.S.-organized assaults on urban areas, such as the devastation of the Iraqi city, Fallujah, in 2004 when U.S. Marines routed Iraqi insurgents from the city while leveling or severely damaging most of the city’s buildings and killing hundreds of civilians. But those victims were portrayed in the Western press as “human shields,” shifting the blame for their deaths onto the Iraqi insurgents.
Despite the fact that U.S. forces invaded Iraq in defiance of international law – and thus all the thousands of civilian deaths across Iraq from the “shock and awe” U.S. firepower should be considered war crimes – there was virtually no such analysis allowed into the pages of The New York Times or the other mainstream U.S. media. Such talk was forced to the political fringes, as it continues to be today. War-crimes tribunals are only for the other guys.
Lust to Kill Children
By contrast, the Times routinely portrays the battle for east Aleppo as simply a case of barbaric Russian and Syrian leaders bombing innocent neighborhoods with no regard for the human cost, operating out of an apparent lust to kill children.
SNIP
BBC had Good Mosul story and then the next story was Humanitarian Crisis in Aleppo
Sad to see this website being used as a conduit for Putin’s rehash of Soviet “whataboutism”
Good article.
This country has largely lost it’s understanding of what war is all about. The Nazi Blitz against London killed 50,000 people — civilians. War is hell.
Assad attacks Aleppo? That butcher!!!
We attack Mosul?? Thank goodness those people will soon be liberated!!!
None of it is pretty. And I’m sick of the media trying to tell me how to feel about any of it.
Mosul leads to nowhere, except maybe back to Turkey
Aleppo is the city where Qatar and Saudi want to put an oil/ gas pipeline through and the ISIS Jihadi in Aleppo are Saudi/Qatar mercenaries
I visited Vicksburg, MS a couple of years ago. Seems General Grant did pretty much the same thing to it that Assad’s doing to Aleppo. Then, of course, General Sherman expelled all the citizens from Atlanta and burned the city to the ground before starting on his march to the sea. BTW, Abe Lincoln approved both operations.
There’s no justification for any modern military force to cause casualties in a civilian population when it is re-taking the same f#%&ing city an endless number of times ... THIRTEEN F#%&ING YEARS after the “war” ended.
ISIS and Al-Queda use human-shields. They behead those who try to escape. If they can’t behead them then they go after their families.
I’m sad to find concern-trolls like you trying to validate this vicious policy.
Mosul and the ISIS bunch there need to be taken out.
Assad needs to be taken out also.
The situations are not unconnected.
Assad and his new little Buddy Putin are NOT fighters for freedom.
Assad is a brutal, savage, vicious dictator, every bit as vile as Saddam Hussein, and a man who was in league with Saddam. He is waging a war of extermination against his own people.
Putin is a very shrewd, intelligent individual taking advantage of a mess created mainly by Obama. His objective is not to launch a crusade against ISIS, but to control the energy production of the Middle East and,by extension, Europe, OPEC and a good part of the rest of the world.
By maintaining Assad in power in Syria, controlling Yemen through Iranian supported Houthis, and occupying Iraq with his allies the Iranians, he will accomplish the above.
He has also weakened the west by forcing a massive migration out of Syria and the Middle East into Europe.
The Russians will have military basis in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
They will then control Saudi Arabia, the Suez Canal and energy flow to the west from there, along with that produced domestically in Russia.
Stop portraying Putin as a hero. He is an enemy who is out to control us.
Yes. They need to be destroyed totally first. THEN Assad, who is every bit as brutal and vicious.
I support Trump and hope he will be President. If he is elected, my suspicion is, Putin and Assad will find him a lot more difficult to deal with than the amateurs Obama and Hillary.
How are we going to “take out” all these people? We don’t even know where most of them are and their alliances are constantly shifting so it’s not like we can surgically remove them.
We’d have to have blitzkrieg warfare over a vast territory killing hundreds of thousands if not millions. We would then have a vast territory we could not hold. We don’t even have enough military personnel to hold Iraq much less a much larger region.
Then there is Russia and Iran.
If we don’t fight them THERE we will have to fight them HERE and we are. There are people THERE who know who these people are and where they are and people THERE more than willing to assist in taking these savages out EVERYWHERE.
Russia has been right in opposing the faux 'Arab Spring'.
I don't see them as enemies and applaud them in their attempt to straighten out what we messed up.
Putin is in this moment of history is a God sent.
Hey, jerk, you changed my statement and then put it in quotes as though I said it.
How much is Hillary paying you, TROLL????
That is insane.
Putin INVADED Georgia, Putin INVADED Ukraine and Putin is doing EXACTLY what I said in prior statements.
Bush and his interventions are partly to blame but the mess now exists, there is only one way to solve it and it isn’t by capitulating to Putin.
If they haven’t got the guts to confront him in Syria, build those missile sites he dislikes so much in Eastern Europe, which is exactly where he will be going after winning in the Middle East - to resurrect the old Soviet Empire.
Yemen is ok too.
Muslims 25% of the global population not counting their likely allies in such a war, such as Russia and China
Americans barely 5% of global population with a military that does not have enough personnel to hold territory the size of Iraq.
Do the math.
It would be better to CONTAIN them to their own territories and let them fight out their own religious civil wars. We get out of their space, they get out of our space.
I did not say Putin is a hero.
He is working in his own and his countries best interests.
But he is smarter than we have been. He is not messing around with all this “nation building” stuff.
Russia has a manpower problem as well. They do not have enough military personnel to ‘hold’ vast tracts of territory. That’s why they are just trying to control a small area of the coast in Syria. They want access to the ports primarily. They don’t want to hold Aleppo or Mosul or vast tracts of land. That would be stupid
Why do we care if Assad is brutal?
Why is this our problem?
The people of Syria should take him out if he is so brutal. I Said the same thing about Saddaam Hussein. Or other people in the regions should take him out.
They are having what amounts to a RELIGIOUS civil war. Which side are we on in that? Sunni or Shia? Or perhaps one of the many other sub-sects of those two?
I’m sorry, I do not want to waste one American life supporting a Sunni or a Shia side.
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