Activists to Blumenthal: Stop Supporting War

By Reginald Johnson

      HARTFORD --- A coalition of peace activists is criticizing U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn for supporting President Trump’s recent decision to launch a missile attack on Syria.

    Members of the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition recently submitted petitions to Sen. Blumenthal’s office saying that the attack only served to kill more people, make more enemies and contribute to more terrorism.

   “Your support for President Trump’s bombing emboldens the recklessness of military escalation. It emboldens Trump’s wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. It enables Trump to threaten war with North Korea, China, Russia and the world,” the petition said.

 

  The group also wrote that by endorsing the missile strikes, Blumenthal was “in actuality” supporting Trump’s proposal to expand the approximately $600 billion military budget by $54 billion. This means more war and less money for social programs like Meals on Wheels, school lunches, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid, they said.

   “Bombing abroad kills us at home,” the petition reads.

   The statement implores Blumenthal to "Stop Supporting Wars" and "Fund Our Cities."

 

Peace activists confront Sen. Richard Blumenthal over his support for Syrian missile strikes.

 

 President Trump ordered the missile strike on April 7 in response to what the administration claimed was a “chemical weapons attack” by the Assad government in Syria days earlier that killed more than 100 people.

  Trump’s decision to launch the strike --- consisting of 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean at a Syrian airfield --- has won bi-partisan support.

  Blumenthal issued a statement saying that the U.S. attack “sent a message to the murderous Assad regime and his enablers, Russia and Iran.”

    However, the senator did question the legality of the missile strike, since there was no congressional authorization and also noted that the administration needed a broader strategy for dealing with Syria.

   Days after the American strike, members of the coalition decided to protest outside Blumenthal’s office at Statehouse Square and submit the petitions.  The senator heard about the activists gathering and came outside for a brief meeting with the group before he headed off for another appointment.

   Blumenthal listened politely to various comments questioning the U.S. assault, but gave no ground.

  Steve Krevisky, a professor at Middlesex Community College told Blumenthal he was skeptical about the claim that Syrian government forces were responsible for the chemical attack. He noted that initial claims that Assad had used chemical weapons in 2013 --- which nearly prompted an American military response at that time --- were proven wrong after an investigation.

  Blumenthal commented, however, that “there is a lot of evidence” that Assad was guilty this time.

 Henry Lowendorf, of the Greater New Haven Peace Council, also said how the Iraq war – which left hundreds of thousands dead, millions of people displaced and spawned ISIS terrorism ---  was based on the false assertion that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

  “We’re not getting the truth,” he said.

  He also lamented the fact that Congress keeps paying for massive military appropriations, which underwrite the cost of wars.

  “You can’t say stop the wars as long as Congress keeps signing the checks,” he said. 

   “Right,” said Blumenthal, then saying “believe it or not, I have another appointment to go to.”

  The senator said he was glad he had a chance to speak with the group and then left.

Demanding an end to U.S. intervention in Syria

  Asked later how he felt the impromptu meeting with Blumenthal had gone, Lowendorf said, “I think Senator Blumenthal listened to us as best he could, but I don’t think he hears us. I think what he hears is the military-industrial complex, and that’s what he supports.”

   Krevisky said that going forward, “we need to be out there mobilizing” against war. “A lot of us were part of the Vietnam era protests, and they had a very big impact. We need to be out there in large numbers. A lot of us feel that way and that’s why we set up the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition, to achieve something like that.”

     

(The next meeting of the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition is Saturday, May 13, 10 a,m.-12 noon in the student lounge at Middlesex Community College in Middletown. For information contact Joe Wasserman at joewass64@yahoo.com, or Steve Krevisky at SKrevisky@mxcc.commnet.edu or Henry Lowendorf at grnhpeacecouncil@gmail.com)

 

 

Media Bias on Syria

                          

 By Reginald Johnson

    Over the past several years, traditional rules of journalistic fairness and objectivity seem to have disappeared on the subject of Syria.

  American reporters and commentators repeatedly present just one side of the conflict --- the American side --- and little else. Syrian leader Bashar al—Assad is portrayed as a demon, carrying out a brutal campaign to retain power in a fight with rebel forces, who are being aided by the United States.

  When terrible things happen in this conflict, such as civilians getting bombed or poisoned, the blame is always laid at the doorstep of the Syrian government. Claims of misdeeds by Assad’s forces are spit out almost word for word from State Department releases. There’s rarely any attempt to seek comment or get the Syrian side of the story.

  In these reports or commentaries, there’s rarely any mention of the fact that the United States has been involved in Syria for five years, first covertly aiding the anti-Assad forces, some of whom are al-Qaeda spinoffs, and now bombing areas held by the terrorist group, ISIS. There’s no mention in the reporting that the American presence is completely illegal under international law, since Syria never attacked the U.S., the United Nations never authorized any intervention, and Syria never gave permission to the Americans to conduct bombing raids against ISIS in its sovereign territory.

  The United States is simply there in Syria, along with its “NATO allies” because it thinks it has the automatic right to be there, and the terrible Mr. Assad and ISIS, must be removed.

  The New York Times on April 29 ran a piece entitled “Divided Syrian City Plunges Back Into War as Hospital Is Destroyed,” which was an example of the one-sided reporting. The story described the carnage that resulted from an air attack on the al-Quds hospital in Aleppo, which resulted in 27 deaths, including children and staff. The article, written by a reporter in Beirut, simply said that “government forces” had carried out the attack, according to “witnesses and health workers.” There was no comment from the government.

  The bombing of a hospital is certainly a terrible crime, and it is in fact a war crime. It may well be true that Assad’s forces are guilty of this horrendous attack. But isn’t it incumbent on the newspaper reporting this information to get a response from the alleged perpetrator? Just because they are likely to deny the claim doesn’t mean you don’t try to get their side.

  The article later said that “groups such as Physicians for Human Rights” maintain that they had tracked “a deliberate targeting of health services by government forces.”

   Now this is a sweeping claim, that the government is deliberately bombing health facilities, committing multiple war crimes. It cries out for additional verification, statements from other named sources, any witnesses or corroboration by an independent journalist who investigated the charges. It also demands a response from the government. But none of that was in the Times’ story.

  Also left out of this article was context. There should have been some background given --- that this is a five-year-old conflict, with rebels aided by the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, attempting to overthrow Assad, and the government, aided by Russia (whose help Assad requested) and Hezbollah and Iran trying to keep Assad in power.

   Another one-sided report came surprisingly in a piece by Chris Hayes of MSNBC, on May 5.  Taking the word of the State Department that the Syrian government was responsible for the al-Quds hospital attack, Hayes blasted the Assad regime for what he said were repeated human rights violations.

   Hayes said the Syrian leader had “engaged in one of the most ghastly campaigns of slaughter and war crimes in this century and there is no just solution or any solution for the horror of Syria that does not hold him accountable.”

  Hayes' statement seemed to mirror the Obama administration's position that there could be no settlement in Syria unless Assad is removed.

   Hayes, like the Times, didn’t provide any response from a Syrian representative and failed to mention that the United States was deeply involved in the Syrian conflict, funneling arms to anti-government forces, and prolonging the war.

The MSNBC commentator noted with disgust that the Syrian government had been responsible for 183,827 deaths since the conflict began, without breaking that number down between combatants and civilians, and without giving a source.

 But a lot of other people have been killed in this conflict, also. According to the UN, about 100,000 government or pro-government fighters have been killed by the U.S.-backed forces, but that fact apparently wasn’t worth mentioning in Hayes’ report. Are members of the government military not people too?

  CNN has often presented a slanted view on foreign affairs, and their Syrian coverage has fit the pattern. The network has consistently aired reports giving a pro-America, rebel perspective, while casting Assad and his allies, like Russia, in a negative light.

  Just last week Wolf Blitzer ran a segment on Russia’s continuing involvement in Syria, months after Russian President Vladimir Putin said his nation was going to withdraw some of its forces. While showing a video captioned “Russia still has a strong military presence in Syria,” a reporter said that “Violence still rages in most of the countryside. Conciliation seems nowhere in sight and neither is an end to Russia's involvement in the conflict.”

   Neither the reporter nor Blitzer bothered to note America’s continuing involvement in Syria --- that U.S. planes have been bombing the Syrian countryside since last fall, that 250 special forces were recently sent to Syria allegedly to fight ISIS, and that U.S. proxies Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been giving weaponry to the anti-Assad forces for years.

  I’m wondering if CNN will ever run a news video with the caption “America still bombing Syria.”

   I don’t think so.