From Consortium News
U.S.-backed Syrian 'moderate' rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy (left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video.
(Image by [Screenshot from the YouTube video]) Details DMCA
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.
Rather than focusing on Al Qaeda's harsh rule of east Aleppo, the Times told its readers in late September how to perceive the Russian-Syrian offensive to drive out Al Qaeda and its allies. A Sept. 25 article by Anne Barnard and Somini Sengupta, entitled "Syria and Russia Appear Ready to Scorch Aleppo," began:
"Make life intolerable and death likely. Open an escape route, or offer a deal to those who leave or surrender. Let people trickle out. Kill whoever stays. Repeat until a deserted cityscape is yours. It is a strategy that both the Syrian government and its Russian allies have long embraced to subdue Syrian rebels, largely by crushing the civilian populations that support them.
"But in the past few days, as hopes for a revived cease-fire have disintegrated at the United Nations, the Syrians and Russians seem to be mobilizing to apply this kill-all-who-resist strategy to the most ambitious target yet: the rebel-held sections of the divided metropolis of Aleppo."
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