A curious thing in the Western media this weekend is how little coverage is being given to a momentous victory unfolding in Syria. The Syrian Arab Army and Russian forces are about to close the final chapter in the five-year war – and the Western media don’t seem to want to know about it.
Indeed, far more media coverage is given to Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the Democrat’s presidential candidate. While Clinton was declaring to her party’s convention how she would wipe out Islamist terrorists in the Middle East, the Syrian army and its Russian allies were actually getting on with that very job.
Syria’s northern city of Aleppo – which was the country’s biggest city before the onset of the war in 2011 – is about to be fully retaken by the Syrian army, supported by Russian air power. Humanitarian corridors have been created to allow civilians and surrendering fighters to escape before the final assault begins on anti-government militias holed up in the east of the city
The militants are an amalgam of illegally armed groups, including the proscribed terrorist brigades affiliated to al-Qaeda. Western governments and media engage in cynical word games by referring to some of the fighters as “moderates” and “rebels”.
For example, a CNN report states: “Syrian and Russian forces are to open humanitarian corridors for people to flee the besieged city of Aleppo, officials in both countries said Thursday, the day after Syria’s army announced it had encircled the city and cut off rebel [sic] supply routes.”
Note how the nice-sounding word “rebel” is invoked as a way of sanitizing the fact that the city has been besieged by extremists, who have seen fit to chop off the heads of their victims, including 10-year-old boys.
What Syrian and Russian forces are about to achieve in the recapture of Aleppo is nothing short of a historic victory. It is not just the symbolism of regaining Syria’s second city, which has the strategic significance of government-controlled Damascus. With its proximity to the Turkish border, Aleppo has been a bastion for illicit flow of weapons and mercenaries that has fueled the entire Syrian conflict.
The United States and its NATO allies, Britain and France, have worked with their regional partners Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to use Aleppo as the staging post for their covert, dirty war of regime change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The death-cult mercenaries for this foreign conspiracy of regime change in Syria have come from all over the world, from some 100 countries, including Western and Arab states, as well as from Russia’s Caucuses.
In many ways, Aleppo represents the last stand for the regime-change forces. When Aleppo finally falls in the coming weeks, it will spell the end of Syria’s torturous conflict which was imposed on the country by the US and its allies for the purpose of regime change under the guise of a “pro-democracy” uprising.
What an indictment that is of Washington’s criminality and that of its rogue state cronies. Some 400,000 people killed over the past five years and nearly half the population of 23 million turned into refugees. The refugee crisis and blowback terrorism that Europe is confronted with are also repercussions from this foreign criminal conspiracy to subvert Syria.
The victory against state-sponsored terrorism on Syria is a tribute to the tenacity and courage of the Syrian people, their government and their army.
And in that victory Russia has played a formidable, heroic role. President Assad has acknowledged the vital role of Russia’s military intervention in saving his nation from the fate that other nations have succumbed to, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – all victims of US-led regime-change machinations.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin resolved to send in his military forces to salvage Syria at the end of September 2015, the turnaround was immediate and crucial.
The industrial-scale oil smuggling routes run by the jihadist networks in eastern Syria were smashed by Russian air power. That cut off major financial support to the jihadists which the Turkish state had facilitated. That, in turn, left the terrorist center at Raqqa to wither from isolation.
The retaking of ancient Palmyra in the center of Syria with its world-class archaeological heritage was also another momentous victory for the Syrian army and its Russian ally. The holding of a classical music concert by Russian artists among the Romanesque ruins recaptured from terrorists was not merely smart public relations. It spoke eloquently of what the Syrian war was all about.
A conflict between a sovereign nation supported by Russia against barbaric killers mobilized by lawless foreign powers.
The battle now underway for Aleppo is one more – perhaps the final – historic stage in Syria’s struggle against regime-change forces. Russia and President Putin can proudly take pride of place in this historic victory.
No wonder then that Western media would rather ignore what is happening in Syria. For years, they have spun a torrent of lies and fabrications, claiming that “rebels” were fighting for democracy against a “tyrannical regime”.
Now as Syrian and Russian forces bear down on these “rebel” remnants the truth is hardly deniable. They are being seen for what they are: a network of terrorist mercenaries deployed by the United States and its allies, who are facing ultimate defeat.
And so in order to avoid the moment of ghastly truth, and their own complicity in state-sponsored terrorism, the Western media by necessity have to pan away from Syria and the battle of Aleppo.
They turn to a new narrative for distraction – the “wonderful” nomination of Hillary Clinton as the first woman to run for the US presidency.
Typical of the inane subject-changing maneuver are glowing quotes from Clinton on how she will lead America and the world in defeating jihadist terrorism.
This is the same Clinton who as US Secretary of State (2009-2013) orchestrated the covert war for regime change in Syria, with the despicable deployment of terrorist mercenaries guided by the American Central Intelligence Agency.
That is, the very war that Russia is now helping to finally put an end to, along with extinguishing the US-sponsored “moderate” terror groups. Washington and Clinton in particular may start wars, but evidently it is Russia that finishes them.
Yet, amazingly, listening to Clinton regale her supporters at the Democrat convention this week one cannot but be in awe of the astronomical cognitive dissonance. A warmonger posing as a champion for world peace and law and order?
This breath-taking, absurd deception is only made possible because of the way Western media operate to change the narrative, distort perspectives and obliterate the facts.
But the incontrovertible fact is that Russia and Syria are winning a historic war against Western-backed terrorist aggression. Aleppo is the clarion call for this victory.
The Western media can’t handle that. Instead, they are obliged to try to shift the focus. And to whom do they turn for light relief? Why, one of the culprit architects of the criminal war on Syria – Hillary Clinton – and her promises to defend America from Russia and terrorists.
By Finian Cunningham, Sputnik