(Below is a comment responding to Asa Winstanley’s latest piece of non-investigative journalism: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/inquiry/18855-why-is-the-media-ignoring-israels-alliance-with-al-qaeda)
Asa Winstanley calls himself an “Investigative journalist”, yet there is no way that a genuinely curious investigative journalist can fail to investigate the US bombing the non-ISIS (actually anti-ISIS) Syrian resistance/”rebels” from September last year until now, there is no way that a genuine investigative journalist would not have ‘investigated’ the uproar and protests that happened across Syria when this happened, or cover the statements by *all* the revolutionary factions (saying something considering their general disunity) declaring that the US was ‘attacking the revolution’; a genuinely curious investigative journalist would point out such interesting ‘discoveries’ regardless of what the implications are of it (the purpose of a real ‘investigative journalist’ is to investigate not to conclude).
Instead of this model in Asa Winstanely we have one that fails to investigate the US pouring *$1 BN* into Iraq and providing air cover for Shia militias (instead divertingly referring to practically non-existent funding for the ‘vetted’ 0.016% of the overall rebel factions, which generally doesn’t reach even them (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/27/exclusive-obama-cuts-funds-for-the-syrian-rebels-he-claims-to-support.html, http://www.wsj.com/articles/covert-cia-mission-to-arm-syrian-rebels-goes-awry-1422329582), one that fails to investigate the US refusing to give radar warnings of Syrian aircraft to the Syrian civil defence (yet alone rebels) (https://twitter.com/TheSyriaCmpgn/status/571371684852326400), one that fails to investigate the US refusing to allow Arab countries to give rebels anti-aircraft missiles *for 4 years*, one that fails to investigate Hezbollah’s new budding intelligence-coordinating relationship with the US against Nusra and other rebels near Lebanon (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/world/middleeast/though-adversaries-on-the-surface-us-and-hezbollah-share-a-goal-.html), and indeed one that fails to ‘investigate’ the US and Iran saying that they will form official diplomatic relations.
There is no way someone can ‘fail’ to investigate this, which means you are either really, really horrible at your job, or more likely that you are trying to clearly and intentionally divert from the clear alliance that the US has been forming with Iran ever since the Arab Spring broke out as an established conservative state against a sea of upheaval, and Iran and Hezbollah’s disgusting betrayal, Bush-like transformation of using the ‘terrorist’ label from day one like every other Arab government against those who once defended them from it. There is no way that someone who ‘investigates’ the region can actually claim that the US has preferred Sunni Islamists (ISIS and non-ISIS) more than the much less potentially regionally destabilising Shia Islamists. You must, therefore, be knowingly trying to do a hasbara type deflection (of projecting what you yourself are doing onto others). So the question posed is: Are you another of this new orientalist pseudo-leftist ‘rep activist’ anglophone ‘class’ which has been given favour and praise by the ‘Iranian lobby’ in recent times? (I use the term ‘Iranian lobby’ carefully, since I’ve never seen such a trend of relentless, coordinated and organised propaganda that can be compared to Israel as I have from the Iranian camp in the last 4 years of the Arab Spring)
If you’re still confused about what the US position on Syria is, it is what we pro-dignity (not pro-military boot) Arabs said from day one of the revolutions, literally. It wasn’t even a matter of hindsight, we actually said all this; that in Syria the US wanted two sides to destroy each other, that their support for the revolution was an illusion since the result would either be democracy or Islamists (mainstream or extremist, all of whom they’ve bombed), that extremists would rise because the US was blocking the help to moderate rebels because they shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ in ther videos, that in the end they would wanted the regime to come out eventually on top (‘Sisi solution’), perhaps without Assad but if things get really bad maybe even with him. But the far-removed identity-politics driven pseudo-leftist idiots like you in the West Mr Astansley did not care about what the activists and people of that region said, for like any Western-narcissist orientalist you would only listen to them where it fitted your identity-fitted agenda (of not being associated with the Western ‘we support democracy’ bullshit, entailing instead of choosing the path of saying that it was bullshit and examining all the policies proving why, choosing to associate yourself with right-wing fascist governments).
You could not look past was the ‘we support democracy’ usual bullshit that we had been accustomed to yet apparently should now have appreciated. Because the US which wouldn’t even stick up for Mubarak’s human rights abuses and criticised him was expected to stick up for Assad’s (and in fact in a morose sense of irony it did, it took longer for Obama to announce that ‘Assad lost his legitimacy’ than any other Arab leader – go back and check that).As a result of your detachment from the daily realities of the conflict (raising your head which is generally buried in the sand every now and then, thinking when you do that you do not need examine evidence but could ‘deduce’ what is going on from your orientalist ‘Talibanitis’), contradictions such as Sisi (‘Western puppet’) being a supporter of Assad (‘anti-Western hero’) of course don’t make sense, and to deal with that you simply ignore it. Contradictions like the US bombing those rebels who are its ‘puppets’ don’t make sense, so you simply ignore it. Contradictions such as all of Europe’s far right supporting Assad don’t make sense, so you simply ignore it. Contradictions such as neo-nazis going to fight for Assad don’t make sense (https://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/are-greek-neo-nazis-fighting-for-assad-in-syria1), so you simply ignore it. In conclusion, you become a fascist apologist out of ignorance, yet there is no harm in admitting your errors. If your pride however stands in the way, and you continue to attack the people who’ve been massacred by the 21st Century’s Pol Pot with your approval, it is this we will relentlessly attack.
The US position has been verifiably, in both word and policy, to put political pressure on the regime entailing an Egypt-style transition which could minimise as much as possible the prospect of radical change and which can keep the core structures of the regime in tact while calming popular anger. There was perhaps hope that the military would sacrifice Assad as its head as it did in Egypt, but they were two very different structures. And the reason you didn’t understand this very straight-forward policy is that you also failed to ‘investigate’ the 4 years of intense courting that the US had undertaken with the Syrian regime leading up to 2011 and which were shown by Wikileaks (http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=2442, https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/releasedate/2012-09-14-00-barack-obama-s-courtship-of-bashar-al-assad.html), and which it would prefer not to have thrown away if possible. Every Democrat president since Carter had had a ‘Middle-Eastern peace legacy’ to brag about (Carter with Sadat, Clinton with Arafat), and Obama was trying to make Assad his, and was very close to as well (ironically the revolution cut that short, when protesters chanted ‘Bashar is an American agent’). You also failed to investigate Syria’s history and associate its Arabism with the regime, rather than 80 years of Arabist tradition which went back to opposition to the Ottomans and existed long before the Ba’ath.
You must be a fool if you think that the US will allow (unfortunately for you) any popular *revolutionary* Islamists (which like a typical Islamophobe you want to make synonymous with ‘terrorist’ – political Muslims can’t be anything but extremist see, spreading the lying pretence that ISIS-types were the only ‘Sunni Islamists’) control over an airforce, navy or state machinery. Iran has established its ‘conservative’ credentials by using the poisonous word (but not just a word) of ‘terrorists’ and this is why the US is now dealing with it. Morsi lasted a year before ‘the military restored’ democracy as Kerry said, and Morsi was 100 times more of a compromise than Syria’s Islamists. Kerry also said that ‘Assad has to be part of the solution in Syria’, another thing you ‘failed’ to ‘investigate’.
The Eternal Spring 