NORMAN SOLOMON: What was accomplished was a lot of applause from mainline media in the United States, most of whom have been very negative towards President Trump, often for good reasons. But a lot of the critics – whether it’s in MSNBC or the New York Times or Washington Post, who have been very down on a lot of things that Trump has done – really saluted. They applauded. They said how great it was that the president would take action in this military way – much pressure to do more – and that’s something that unfortunately has become a repetition compulsion disorder by the mass media to promote and push military action usually not authorized by Congress, but egged on and pushed for by the mass media. And that was the case here.
Other that, what was accomplished was to keep the ball rolling for more killing in various directions in Syria. I don’t think there’s a case that can be made that sending missiles into Syria is going to reduce the killing. On the contrary, the more you put fuel on the fire, people suffer and die.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Norman, one of the major issues that really is not being addressed by the Trump administration nor the Obama administration before it was the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, upwards of more than 400,000 civilians have been killed in this war since 2011. It seems like the United States and much of the rest of the world is just standing aside and not taking action, except in this instance of alleged use of chemical weapons. It seems like we’re losing sight of the bigger priority here.
NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, a lot of people in the United States sincerely want the United States to intervene. They feel you’ve got to do something. The question is what? And often the idea, “Oh, we’ve got to do something” is more about us than about the situation. In reality, it’s sort of self-therapy, so we’ll feel better about it. We’re not being inactive. The U.S. has been involved shipping weapons through the CIA to various groups, often terrorists groups – by the description of the State Department – ended up with some of those weapons. Nobody can really keep a straight scorecard on these morphing groups. Often jihadist groups in Syria, a so-called opposition rebel opposition. There was a phrase even coined a couple of years ago, I think seriously, Scott, the “moderate extremist” was one description of some of the factions involved in trying to overthrow the Syrian government. To me, the clearest and most sensible and most humane position is to oppose all the killing from all directions.
And I would condemn the Assad government. I would condemn the rebels who have been killing people. I would condemn Russia and the United States for sending in weapons and egging on and making more and more this of a proxy war with more and more slaughter. The pressure in the United States though, is for the U.S. to up the ante. After all, as U.S. citizens – or at least people who live inside the borders of the United States – we can’t have a big effect on other governments, but theoretically we have in a democracy, effect on our own.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Norman, one thing I think strikes the chords of many Americans’ hearts and people across the world is seeing children particularly suffering with this alleged chemical attack, and then you have a response of our media as you described, egging on a military response. We have inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the OPCW. Their mission is to go and inspect the site and see what was responsible for the deaths of these some 70 people in the village of Douma. What should’ve been the U.S. response here, if any, on the allegations that chemical weapons were used against important international treaties?
NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, even if you want to shoot, you first find out the facts. And it was really ass backwards avowedly and cheered on by the U.S. mass media, the White House acknowledging at least to some degree, “We don’t have the facts, we don’t really know for sure what happened there. Was there a chemical weapons attack – which it looks like there probably was. Who perpetrated it? We don’t know, but we’ll fire the missiles anyway. ”
This is just absolutely backwards to the most sensible elementary way that one would proceed even if you thought that you would help the situation by sending missiles into the country. OPCW is an organization that is in sync with the history of inspectors and international groups dominated by the United States. Very politicized. We’re in a sea of propaganda. We’re drowning in it. Ah, I’m not going to sign up on any side in this conflict except finding peace and that would require regional diplomacy. We hardly ever hear regional diplomacy or any diplomacy talked about seriously. It’s often, if mentioned at all, just in the context of window dressing to try to gain some sense of a PR advantage or credibility before the U.S. goes ahead and does what it wants to do anyway. But there’s no way in hell that there’s going to be any solution in Syria without various countries in the region and beyond coming together and really sitting down at the conference table.
