CBS News provided another in its heartrending series on Syria last night, with its intrepid reporter having braved hellfire and brimstone to bring us actual videos provided by the fearless and brave “freedom fighters” themselves showing the devotees of democracy and justice being slaughtered by the engines of oppression and war.
The “popular uprising” which they portray is actually, of course, acknowledged by the rest of the world to be a civil war, considerably less bloody I might add, than the one this nation fought a couple centuries ago. The Syrian division is ethnic rather than geographic, and what CBS News fails to mention that part of what Assad is protecting is the Christian minority in Syria, which will be slaughtered en masse if he loses, which rather diminishes the nobility of the “freedom fighters” whom they glorify.
CNN has an article, rather typical of the US media, hyperventilating about the upcoming “massacre” in Aleppo. One has to suspect a plan here to foment US/NATO intervention under the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, invoking images of Libya’s Benghazi threats, but it doesn’t seem to be working very well.
The article is very colorful, but weakens its case for civilian massacre when it points out the 18 of the 22 rebel brigades are located in Aleppo, which makes a government massed attack rather reasonable. This is a civil war, after all, and civil wars are not pretty.
And the bombardment of Aleppo as they describe it sounds quite similar to that inflicted by the Northern forces on Vicksburg during our Civil War; an action, I hasten to add, which was entirely justified against a city occupied by enemy forces which decline to surrender.
Juan Cole meanwhile, who should really know better, is implying that the Assad regime is headed for oblivion because “dozens of one-star generals” and several members of the governing elite have defected. That, too, is what happens in civil wars. In our Civil War the man who was probably the best general our Army had fought for the South. Large numbers of the governing elite went with the South along with entire brigades of the Army, and the North still won.
Let me tell you something about Cole. He's got an antiwar reputation, though he supported the Iraq War initially. Then Libya. he provided helpful information about The Lobby, but he's a liberal internationalist-interventionist when push comes to shove.
ReplyDeleteThere are still a considerable hardcore of Sunnis who support Assad incidentally. I'm a firm non-interventionist, though not a libertarian, more of a Buchanan antiwar nationalist.