War Propaganda and the Fall of Syria

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

11 Dec 2024

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2018 meme debunking accusations of chemical weapons use by Syria. Image: @angelojohngage

A succession of U.S. presidents have been committed to regime change in Syria. That long-held goal has been achieved in part through a sustained campaign of war propaganda.

“AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
Senior Policy Adviser Jake Sullivan's 2012 email to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

The rapid fall of the Syrian Arab Republic government was both a shock and a catastrophe for that region and for the world. It was incomprehensible that the state which withstood a sustained attack since 2011 from the United States, Israel, Turkey and other NATO members, and gulf monarch states such as Saudi Arabia, would collapse so swiftly. The defeat was political, not military. There was surprisingly little actual fighting on the battlefield.

Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, is engaged in Ukraine, while Turkey, Syria’s nemesis, played a two-sided game of working with its NATO allies while claiming to be negotiating in good faith with Russia. Surely more details are still to come, but treachery and a U.S. commitment to pursuing hegemony won the day and the Axis of Resistance now represented only by Iran, has been dealt a huge blow. The project for a Greater Israel is a reality and the Israeli Defense Forces have destroyed Syria’s air force and navy as Syrian Arab Army soldiers have fled rather than risk capture by the jihadists who have now overrun that country.

Syria was the victim of a U.S. regime change plot that began in 2011 and it was carried out by successive administrations with the help of collusion with the media. The U.S. had buy-in for whatever acts it wanted to carry out against Syria because of a sustained war propaganda effort. That effort continued until the last moment before the government fell.

After the Barack Obama administration succeeded in destroying the state of Libya and killing its president with the help of jihadist proxies, it turned its attention to Syria in an attempt to replicate that plot. The corporate media assisted with a drumbeat of condemnation against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The country, with a long history of supporting dictators and tyrants, declared that Assad was a murderer, a dictator, and a butcher. Their propaganda output included newly created terms such as “barrel bombs” and a new epithet against anyone who spoke against their regime change project, who were labeled as “Assadists.”

Every tool of war propaganda was put to use, including claims that Assad was using chemical weapons against his people. In a futile effort to end such charges, in 2013, the Russian government assisted the Syrians in destroying their chemical weapons stockpiles, but to no avail. The charges continued without any evidence. Syria was even accused of using chemical weapons on the very day that United Nations inspectors arrived in 2013.

The chemical weapons charge was used over and over again and each time the version of events strained credulity. In 2018 the U.S., France, and the U.K. declared they would take military action against Syria if there were any chemical weapons attacks. Like clockwork, on April 7 of that year, 40 civilians were killed in the city of Douma and it was reported that the Syrian government had dropped chemical weapons on the building where the killings took place. But one inspector from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) cast doubt on that version of events. A leaked document stated, “…there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at both locations rather than being delivered by aircraft.” The whistleblower disappeared from corporate media accounts, while the likelier explanation that civilians were kidnapped and killed by U.S. proxies, was sent down the memory hole.
Consider the odd timeline of events that year. On March 4, a former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a chemical agent in Britain. The British government blames Russia, which has no reason to harm a former spy they swapped eight years prior. Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, arrived in London for an official visit on March 7. On March 12, French president Emmanuel Macron stated that France would attack Syria if any chemical weapons are used there. The next day the Russian military claims to have evidence that a chemical attack will be carried out against Syrian civilians as a pretext for war. On March 16 France warned French journalists to leave Syria. Mohammed bin Salman traveled to Washington on March 19. On April 8 the prince known as MBS went to Paris for yet another official visit. On that day Saudi funded jihadist groups and the White Helmets, who were created by a British intelligence officer, reported that a chemical weapons attack occurred in the city of Douma. On April 14, the United States, France and Britain joined in a missile strike against Syria.

Just as they had done since 2011, the U.S. media played an important part in supporting U.S. foreign policy as the final blows were being planned. CNN disingenuously reported, “How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary.’ “ Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is no longer called a “radical jihadist” leader of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) because CNN and the rest of western media orchestrated the transformation. They didn’t interview al-Jolani in years past, but he and his handlers have now been coached in how the game is played. “I believe that everyone in life goes through phases and experiences…As you grow, you learn, and you continue to learn until the very last day of your life.” It is easy to grow and learn with the help of media image makers. CNN was not alone in offering a helping hand while behaving as an innocent bystander. The British Broadcasting Corporation was also part of the charade with what was essentially the same headline used by CNN. “From Syrian jihadist leader to rebel politician: How Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reinvented himself.” Reinvention is easy when corporate media offer a helping hand.

Al-Jolani was once wanted by the U.S. In 2017, the State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for his capture. “We remain committed to bringing leading AQS figures in HTS to justice.” That announcement from the first Donald Trump administration was also phony. Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her successor John Kerry knew quite well that their proxies were members of ISIS and Al Qaeda offshoots.

The use of jihadists as proxies has a long and ignoble history. In 1993, the British newspaper The Independent interviewed Osama bin Laden, hailing him as an “Anti-Soviet warrior” who used his armies for peaceful purposes. The man who less than ten years later would mastermind the attacks of September 11, 2001, and become a hated villain, had, in fact, been a western ally fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan beginning in the days of the Jimmy Carter administration.

After many fits and starts, the coup de grace has been delivered. The Syrian people who either lived through war or who were forced to become refugees around the world are now ruled by numerous groups of warring jihadists. The U.S. has won a decisive victory and Israel immediately enlarged its occupation of Syria.

Before the details of this change of events are known, it is important to point out what is already known. The west and their agents in the Western Asia region have schemed to take over Syria for many years, and they utilized war propaganda as one of their weapons. They will continue to do so as they work to consolidate their malicious but successful handiwork.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret dot kimberley at blackagendareport dot com

Middle East

Syria

US interventions

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