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Are We To Love Al-Qaeda Or Fear It?
‘I Saw My Father Dying’: A View From Aleppo’s Government-Held Side:
Even as Syria and Russia threatened an all-out assault on the rebel side of Aleppo, saying Friday was the last chance for people there to exit, they had been unable to put down a counteroffensive by a mix of Qaeda-linked and United States-backed insurgent groups.
Three Qaeda-linked suicide bombers attacked a military position with explosive-packed personnel carriers on Thursday, …
Sources: U.S. intel warning of possible al Qaeda attacks in U.S. Monday
Sources told CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton that U.S. intelligence has alerted joint terrorism task forces that al Qaeda could be planning attacks in three states for Monday.
…
‘I Saw My Father Dying’: A View From Aleppo’s Government-Held Side:
Instead, they are trying to break the siege, with Qaeda-linked groups and those backed by the United States working together — the opposite of what Russia has demanded.
Sources: U.S. intel warning of possible al Qaeda attacks in U.S. Monday
The source said there has been pressure on al Qaeda and its affiliates AQAP and AQIS (al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent) to regain relevance with its mission.
What is the message the U.S. government is sending with such accounts? Are we to love al-Qaeda or fear it?
Or are we to fall silent in awe of the sheer genius of Obama's strategic planning?
h/t Mark Ames
P.S. That AQ and CIA "rebels" mercenaries are one bunch is, of course, not new. We wrote about Your Moderate Cuddly Homegrown Al-Qaeda since October 2013. What is new is the NYT, the house organ of the U.S. government, now openly reporting it. What is the message in this?
I sometimes get asked why I post over on MoonOfAlabama, “That leftist blog”. That always strikes me as funny because, in my ignorance, I never knew MoA was historically some kind of a lefty blog. b’s intelligent and sensible writing and the thoughtful comments brought me here – that’s it. I never thought of it as ‘leftist’ in the maybe two years I have been aware of it. It always stuck me as anti-neocon. And neocons are, in fact, ‘new conservative’ liberals. So I apologize to all the old-school non-neocon leftys/liberals that still lurk here – there was no flashing warning sign above the front door and I was terribly thirsty, so I just stumbled in for a drink.
But here’s why I was so thirsty: the New York Times (and most of Western MSM) claims they are unbiased, but this somehow means to them a balance of left/liberal- and right/conservative-leaning reporting. Maybe there is (or was) such a thing, but they have confused the idea of balance by simply morphing the two sides together into a kind of bizarre Franken-unbiased stance that we clearly see as the scourge of neo-conservatism. If Monsanto made ‘unbiased’, it would look like the New York Times. The result is seeing the world through a beer-goggles version of a simplistic good/bad moralistic frame that Qoppa@31 calls out.
The demise of the New York Times to the influence of neocons was news in itself. They should put more reporters on THAT story. But this isn’t just an American/NYT phenomenon, is it? It must apply in some wider context to most other Western MSM. I don’t know the specifics of other countries, but their has been similar observations of (at the very least) the Canadian, British and German press. The Aussie press seemed like it was always broken like this, but everyone there already knew that. The problem with MSM’s Franken-unbias is that they no longer appeal to… well, most people.
Here’s what Liz Spayd, the newest public editor of the New York Times said last summer. Her comment is about U.S. elections, but it reveals a far deeper mortal flaw in most MSM thinking: [bolding is mine]
“…she was taken aback by the deluge of email criticizing the newspaper for “one-sided reporting” and “relentless bias against Trump.”
Her inquiries in the newsroom were met “with a roll of the eyes,” Spayd said, and the claim that all sides hate the Times because they are even-handed in their reporting.
“That response may be tempting, but unless the strategy is to become The New Republic gone daily, this perception by many readers strikes me as poison,” Spayd said candidly. “A paper whose journalism appeals to only half the country has a dangerously severed public mission.”
She went on to muse that a fracturing media environment, with people seeking out the news they want to hear, might be pulling the Times to the left, which is where two-thirds of its readers are. This would be bad, she said, because of the stories that would be missed — such as the “surprising” triumph of Donald Trump in capturing the Republican nomination.
“Imagine a country where the greatest, most powerful newsroom in the free world was viewed not as a voice that speaks to all but as one that has taken sides,” she said, before grimly asking, “Or has that already happened?”…
And why the snarky comment about the NYT turning into a daily The New Republic by Liz? For non-Americans, this description of the weekly The New Republic from a Robert Parry piece in ConsortiumNews will help: [bolding mine]
“…Though The New Republic still touts its reputation as “liberal,” that label has been essentially a cover for its real agenda: pushing a hawkish foreign policy agenda that included the Reagan administration’s slaughter of Central Americans in the 1980s, violent U.S. interventions in Iraq, Syria and other Muslim countries for the past two decades, and Israel’s suppression of Palestinians forever.
Indeed, the magazine’s long-ago-outdated status as “liberal” has long served the cause of right-wingers. The Reagan administration loved to plant flattering stories about the Nicaraguan Contras in The New Republic because its “liberal” cachet would give the propaganda more credibility. A favorite refrain from President Ronald Reagan’s team was “even the liberal New Republic agrees ”
In other words, the magazine became the neocon wolf advancing the slaughter of Central Americans in the sheep’s clothing of intellectual liberalism. Similarly, over the past two decades, it has dressed up bloody U.S. interventionism in the Middle East in the pretty clothes of “humanitarianism” and “democracy.”
The magazine which has given us the writings of neocons Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Steven Emerson, Robert Kagan and many more has become a case study in the special evil that can come from intellectualism when it supplies high-minded rationalizations for low-brow brutality.
In the world of the mind, where The New Republic likes to think it lives, the magazine has published countless essays that have spun excuses for mass murder, rape, torture and other real-world crimes. Put differently, the magazine afforded the polite people of Official Washington an acceptable way to compartmentalize and justify the ungodly bloodshed.
Robert Parry’s explanation fits the present-day NYT like a glove: High-minded rationalizations for low-brow brutality. NYT [adjusting moralistic beer goggles]: “Al Qaeda alliances? Well, you see… sometimes, it’s necessary. Necessary for the U.S. in order to save brown people from evil rulers we don’t like. Sometimes, we have to pal up with head-choppers, drone a few civilians or apply punishing trade sanctions. It’s really OK – trust us… Unless the Russians do it – then it’s a war crime.”
Posted by: PavewayIV | Nov 6 2016 3:38 utc | 34
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