The United States of Amnesia
The propaganda surrounding the conflict in Ukraine has been rewritten for a large part of the population by Western media coverage. Historical amnesia is making it more effective.
So far there have been more than 1,200 articles about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There have been bans on almost everything Russian. The International Cat Federation has banned Russian cats from competing in international competitions, one of boxing's main governing bodies known as the World Boxing Council has banned Russia from hosting championship fights, Tiktok and Netflix have also suspended their services in Russia, along with many other absurd bans and calls for sanctions on Russia. Even pampered Hollywood actors are calling for more sanctions against Russia and even calling for war with Putin. The blatantly hypocritical coverage of the Russian invasion shows how quickly the American media forgets our own history of invading sovereign countries and our own record of breaching treaties.
Whatever Happened to Iraq?
*Je ne regrette rien is French for “I Regret Nothing.”
The corporate media seem to have forgotten that we are illegally occupying Iraq right now. Nor have they shown the slightest skepticism toward the intelligence agencies that lied to us into the Iraq war with the false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The fact that the Bush administration told lies to the American public is no longer controversial. Several people, regardless of political party, agree that we went to war for fictitious reasons. Even a clown like Trump told George Bush's brother Jeb Bush to his face, referring to his brother's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, that "They lied! There were no weapons of mass destruction and they knew there were none! There were no weapons of mass destruction." Since then, there are now thousands of US soldiers dead and a million Iraqi civilians massacred.
There is a culture among journalists in the corporate media sphere of trusting our notoriously unreliable intelligence agencies. Comedian Jon Stewart confronted NY Times journalist Judith Miller for her reporting on the Bush administration’s claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Her response demonstrates mainstream journalist’s practically unshakeable faith in our corrupt intelligence agents.
But when you are intoxicated with American exceptionalism, you ignore these blatant war crimes or simply erase them from your memory.
Many of the stars of the Iraq war are now back on our television screens to tell us how Putin should be stopped for the very crimes they themselves have committed.
Former Secretary of State and one of the architects of the Iraq war, Condoleezza Rice, was invited on Fox News to talk about the Russian invasion:
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined Fox News Sunday and discussed Russia’s invasion of, and ongoing war in Ukraine.
…“I have argued that when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime,” host Harris Faulkner told Rice, as she nodded along in apparent agreement. “I mean, I think we’re at just a real, basic, basic point there.”
Rice was quite notably one of the most vocal and visible advocates of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which drew widespread international condemnation. The U.S. military went into the country based on the ultimately false pretext that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
“Well, it is certainly against every principle of international law and international order, Rice replied. “And that’s why throwing the book at them now in terms of economic sanctions and punishments is also a part of it. And I think the world is there, certainly NATO is there. He’s managed to unite NATO in ways that I didn’t think I would ever see again after the end of the Cold War.”
Then the National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush, Rice was among numerous officials touting faulty intelligence about WMDs.
Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright also weighed in on the conflict in a guest essay in the New York Times. She wrote:
Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so must Mr. Putin. That is the message undergirding recent Western diplomacy. It defines the difference between a world governed by the rule of law and one answerable to no rules at all.
Albright, when asked if the sanctions the United States imposed on Iraq in the 1990s after the first invasion that killed more than 500,000 children were worth it, said: "Yes. We think the price was worth it."
Racist Media Coverage
Western superiority has manifested itself in abundance now that an enemy state is invading a majority white country. The difference between the media coverage of Ukraine and the coverage of the countries the United States invades is staggering. These are just some examples:
This blatant racism does not go unnoticed
In a statement, the Association of Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists refers to an "implicit racial bias in some of the coverage of Ukraine." The association categorically condemned and rejected the "orientalist and racist implications" towards the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
"This kind of commentary reflects the pervasive mindset in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world like the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. It dehumanizes and makes their experience of war normal and expected." , it says.
The imperialist mentality does not spare the darker people on this planet and will not stop unless US citizens dissolve the empire altogether:
By now everyone knows that Ukraine’s flag is blue and yellow. It is impossible to miss as the Empire State Building in New York, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris have all been bathed in those colors. Nearly every city and town across the United States has followed suit and politicians ranging from local legislators to members of congress shout “Stand with Ukraine!” at every opportunity.
Yet it must be pointed out that those blue and yellow motifs and pleas for solidarity are all about white supremacy. Ukraine is upheld as a bastion of “civilization” which is supposed to put it off limits for war and suffering. The quiet part is now being spoken out loud. We are told that Ukrainians are more deserving of concern because they are Europeans.
… The narrative that only white people deserve peace and security is all the more shameful because the global south suffers from war and privation as a direct result of US/NATO actions. It is NATO that destroyed the nation of Libya, NATO which attempted to do the same in Syria, NATO that occupied Afghanistan, NATO which wages war across African countries with US, French and British troops deployed across the continent. The white world causes suffering and then says that the people of the global south are “uncivilized” with no rights that need to be respected.
A Watson Institute of Brown University study showed that more than 37 million people in North Africa, Western and Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa have been displaced by the US and its allies since 2001. The humanitarian disasters begun years ago are ongoing, as refugees use the Mediterranean and even the US border with Mexico as points of escape. After experiencing wars of aggression these nations are then subjected to punishment as the United States steals Afghanistan’s assets and keeps Syria under the thumb of Caesar Sanctions. These thefts cause more suffering and even death as nations are robbed of the ability to care for their people. Who is civilized and who is not?
Ukraine has been pushed to the forefront of American thought in order to defend the imperialist foreign policy which led to the current conflict with Russia. If the blue eyed nation is suffering it is because of US and NATO arrogance and aggression. Ukraine’s current situation is a direct result of the 2014 coup engineered by the US and its EU partners. An elected president was dispatched and a civil war began that has killed some 14,000 people. Ukraine is a US colony with a puppet government now under military attack. Ukrainians are themselves refugees as they flee to neighboring Poland, Romania, Slovakia and other countries. It is the supposedly advanced, democratic, and supposedly civilized who have created their problems.
Yet once again bare faced racism is evident. African migrants and students in Ukraine were prohibited from boarding trains and buses that could take them to safety. A group of Jamaican students was forced to walk 20 kilometers when they were forced off of a bus enroute to Poland. Africans and Jamaicans live and study all over the world because the US and Europe underdevelop their nations through a variety of means. Yet Ukrainians and Poles didn’t see people in need of help. They determined that the non-blondes were not deserving of assistance.
Ironically, it is the white supremacist underpinnings of US/NATO foreign policy which has created all of Ukraine’s suffering. The need to dominate, to “contain” Russia and its ally China is not playing out the way they had hoped but the Ukrainians be damned. The MinskII agreement which was unanimously approved in the United Nations Security Council was a roadmap to peace. Ukraine should be a neutral nation but that is the exact opposite of what its lords and masters in Washington want. The good faith negotiations that could resolve the crisis are a non-starter because NATO is a very dishonest broker.
The corporate media have joined the state in an extraordinary effort to create war propaganda. They deliberately tug at heartstrings and demand solidarity with Ukraine because the truth is very unpalatable. Instead of standing with Ukraine, Americans should stand with humanity across the world. If they did they would be better able to understand why there are wars in Europe or anywhere else.