Three US Army soldiers were killed and more than 30 service members were injured in a drone attack overnight on a small US outpost in Jordan, US officials told CNN, marking the first time US troops have been killed by enemy fire in the Middle East since the beginning of the Gaza war.
In this case it’s almost certainly deliberate to avoid bringing up the moral quandary of the fact they were illegally in another country trying to topple its government (and have been for a decade) and are in violation of international law in being there. Versus the much more palatable, self-righteous narrative of Americans being in a base they were invited to in a country they were invited to which is hosting them. As the story develops they may have to drop the facade and admit they were in Syria but the first knee-jerk reaction of either the military propagandist giving them this story or the loyal dogs of empire at CNN was to obscure that fact.
Isn’t being in countries illegally while trying to topple their government something the US is particularly proud of? Or do they like to keep that thin veneer of deniability?
Syria has been a failure for them. They’ve also been engaged in all kinds of tactics they’d rather not come to light like the fact they’re basically responsible for and puppet-masters for the whole Islamic State extremist group.
And the US tries to cloak its actions wherever possible behind a veneer of international law/institutions or “norms”. In Syria’s case the justification was the use of chemical weapons on civilians which it turns out was a false flag of sorts. In Iraq they successfully fooled enough people to get a coalition together on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. Libya was done on the basis of protecting civilians from a ‘dictator’. Afghanistan obviously had the pretext of 9/11. Vietnam assistance was requested by the French colonizers and a puppet regime they installed. In Korea they had a UN mandate. It goes on and on. That way their paint their actions as grounded in law, respect for civil institutions, concern for human rights while casting other countries as villains.
They carefully engineer pretexts for their own ability to act while trying to use the law and conventions to bind their adversaries from similar actions.
At this point the PR looks bad because we’ve been there for so long, we haven’t won or really achieved anything other than ruining the lives of millions of human beings. It raises the question again of whether we should still be in Syria after a decade at all as most Americans have forgotten and the government would prefer it that way lest they start asking questions and re-examining the lies that started it all.
In this case it’s almost certainly deliberate to avoid bringing up the moral quandary of the fact they were illegally in another country trying to topple its government (and have been for a decade) and are in violation of international law in being there. Versus the much more palatable, self-righteous narrative of Americans being in a base they were invited to in a country they were invited to which is hosting them. As the story develops they may have to drop the facade and admit they were in Syria but the first knee-jerk reaction of either the military propagandist giving them this story or the loyal dogs of empire at CNN was to obscure that fact.
Isn’t being in countries illegally while trying to topple their government something the US is particularly proud of? Or do they like to keep that thin veneer of deniability?
Syria has been a failure for them. They’ve also been engaged in all kinds of tactics they’d rather not come to light like the fact they’re basically responsible for and puppet-masters for the whole Islamic State extremist group.
And the US tries to cloak its actions wherever possible behind a veneer of international law/institutions or “norms”. In Syria’s case the justification was the use of chemical weapons on civilians which it turns out was a false flag of sorts. In Iraq they successfully fooled enough people to get a coalition together on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. Libya was done on the basis of protecting civilians from a ‘dictator’. Afghanistan obviously had the pretext of 9/11. Vietnam assistance was requested by the French colonizers and a puppet regime they installed. In Korea they had a UN mandate. It goes on and on. That way their paint their actions as grounded in law, respect for civil institutions, concern for human rights while casting other countries as villains.
They carefully engineer pretexts for their own ability to act while trying to use the law and conventions to bind their adversaries from similar actions.
At this point the PR looks bad because we’ve been there for so long, we haven’t won or really achieved anything other than ruining the lives of millions of human beings. It raises the question again of whether we should still be in Syria after a decade at all as most Americans have forgotten and the government would prefer it that way lest they start asking questions and re-examining the lies that started it all.