How do you sell the idea of a moderate rebellion without alienating the extremists who will do the actual fighting?
When foreign powers started supporting armed groups to overthrow the Ba’athist government in Syria after 2011, they were unsure about who could, or should, take...
How Her Visit to War-Torn Syria Led a Dutch Socialist Reporter to Lose Her Faith in the West
The picture below is a frame from a smug Western documentary on the Syrian War. I wrote the caption in 2020, after viewing the documentary, which was a piece of propaganda filled...
On March 4, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, made a surprise visit to U.S. troops stationed in northeast Syria to the chagrin of the Syrian government, which said the visit was “illegal" and a “flagrant violation of the country’s sovereignty.”
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said...
Public relations machine transformed hard-line jihadists—whom Hillary Clinton famously called “hard men with guns”—into valiant freedom fighters in the eyes of the U.S.-UK public
Imagine if an armed rebellion took place in the United States against the federal, state and local governments.
Given 21st century...
In the past few months, Grayzone journalist Aaron Maté has interviewed two former ambassadors to Syria: former UK Ambassador Peter Ford and former U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Ford. The two ambassadors have a common surname but very different perspectives...
Issa Touma, photographer from Aleppo, has portrayed the Syrian people before, during and after the war. But it was only when he moved to Sweden that he understood why the Western world’s image of Syria was so distorted. Despite great difficulties in Syria, he feels hopeful for the future.
I...
During her confirmation hearing for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard was grilled about having been a purveyor of “Putin’s talking points” about the U.S. supporting al-Qaeda in Syria.
Of course, Gabbard responded, there can be no doubt about the veracity of such claims.
Thus, Gabbard cited the fact...
U.S. media accounts of the fall of the Assad dynasty in Syria failed to disclose that the U.S. had engaged in a thirteen-year-long operation that started with the Arab Spring and continued with the launching of Operation Timber Sycamore by the Obama administration, the largest covert operation...
It may be no surprise that the “mainstream” corporate news media have turned into advertising agencies for U.S. government policy. But it still surprises that what the CIA called a compatible left—those on the left it deemed compatible with maintaining imperialist rule—celebrates another successful U.S. “regime change,” this time,...
Part of a pattern of media omissions and deception in its coverage of Syria
On December 8, 2024, Syria’s long-standing ruler Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia after being deposed by Sunni militia forces in what New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman called the “biggest…most game-changing event in the Middle...
