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All through the last month, the French have been bombing their "former" colony, Syria, continually. Last week reports were coming about the French bombs ( http
by obrero 11y ago
All through the last month, the French have been bombing their "former" colony, Syria, continually. Last week reports were coming about the French bombs ( http://www.france24.com/en/20151109-france-syria-strike-islamic-state-oil-facility-military http://www.france24.com/en/20151109-france-syria-strike-isla... ).
Now the Syrians dodging French bombs have turned around and bombed the French. News reports say the bombers contained Syrians, and ISIS's statement makes the reason very clear - about the French's "strikes against Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their jets".
France's bullying and killing of Syrians didn't get much press...if it did it was celebrated. Of course, the corporate media doesn't mention at all that the French have been bombing the Syrians for a month - only that some Syrians finally retaliated.
Insofar as ISIS being beyond the pale and such...ho-hum...US and EU leaders were saying that about Syria's secular leader over the past few years, that he was a monster gassing his own people. They've been trying to undermine his government for the past years (thus helping cause this over and above the bombings).
It looks like the imperialist powers have finally found some people with the courage to bomb the bombers.
When Syria was a French colony, Syrians marched in the streets at the end of World War II in 1945 to show their desire for independence. The French army shot into the crowds (as they did in Algeria etc.)
That the French have been bombing the people who just bombed them is probably unknown to 99% of people, since the corporate press never mentions it. So anything I hear is just some Orwellian Two Minute Hate.
It's kind of like 9/11...it was never mentioned the US had military bases in their puppet dictatorship "Saudi" Arabia for over a decade. Never mentioned most Arabians wanted them gone. Never mentioned that the US had armed and sent Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan, to overthrow a secular government, and replace it with an Islamic one. Even among the educated classes, everything that happened in history disappeared, just some people came out of the blue and decided to start bombing their cities.
- acv20 11y agoHow uneducated do you have to be to equate ISIS with the Syrian people? Yes, the bombings are taking place in Syria, but they are targeting ISIS, whose fighters are in large parts non-Syrian foreigners (many of them from Europe). This is one of the reasons that, of all the insurgent groups in Syria, ISIS has the least support from the local population. From what we know right now, most of the Paris attackers were not from Syria, many of them were born and raised in Europe. It's also not the case that people do not know the history. US support for Bin Laden's faction against the soviets in Afhghanistan is well known. The same is true for Saudi Arabia. What is your point though, where's the connection to the current conflict? What should the West do? Sit back and let ISIS take over more and more uncontrolled territory?
- oxide 11y agoPart of me, the naive, idealistic part, wonders what might happen if hell froze over and the US and Russia quit playing proxy war and actually saw eye to eye on crushing ISIS instead of just pretending while they tug of war over Assad.
- dragonwriter 11y agoI think the US and Russia genuinely see eye-to-eye on crushing ISIS. They also are playing tug of war over Assad, which complicates cooperation on that objective.