The United States Government Lies Constantly, And The Burden Of Proof Is On The Accuser by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2020-01-05 at 03:23:44 )

The United States Government Lies Constantly, And The Burden Of Proof Is On The Accuser by Ms Caitlin Johnstone

Over the last 48 hours I have been splitting my free time between (A) learning as much as I possibly can about the United States assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and (B) arguing with people online who are uncritically swallowing United States government claims about why that assassination was necessary.

I always engage such political debates because they are a valuable source of information on what propaganda narratives people are buying into, and therefore which propaganda narratives need to be addressed.

What has been made abundantly clear from this particular engagement is that those who have bought into the Donald Trump administrations completely unsubstantiated claims about Mr. Soleimani are sincerely unaware that they have unquestioningly bought into unsubstantiated United States government narratives.

People tend to get their information from tightly insulated echo chambers, and if you inhabit an echo chamber that supports the current president all you will get is a bunch of officials, pundits and reporters saying in a confident-sounding tone of voice that Mr. Soleimani needed to be taken out.

Since they are surrounded by chatter affirming that Mr. Soleimani had attacked the United States of America and-or posed an imminent threat in the near future, they assume that chatter must be based on some actual facts in evidence.

It is not.

When I speak out online against Donald Trumps act of war on Iran and interact one-on-one with those who object to what I am saying, the disparity between what they think they know and what they actually know gets very quickly highlighted.

Simply by my challenging people to prove the claims that they are making about Mr. Soleimani planning to attack United States of Americans, attacking a United States embassy, directing a strike that allegedly killed a mysteriously unnamed United States contractor in Iraq, killing hundreds of United States soldiers in Iraq, that he is a "terrorist", etc, they quickly realize that they have literally no evidence for their claims beyond the unsubstantiated assertions of United States government officials and people who unquestioningly repeated those assertions.

And from there I just ask them, "How well has uncritically swallowing United States government narratives about the need for military action worked out for you in the past?"

Nobody wants to admit that they are doing such a thing, least of all a Donald Trump supporter who has poured plenty of mental energy into distancing this administration from the previous Republican occupant of the White House. But that is indeed exactly what they are doing: uncritically swallowing baseless claims by United States government officials about the need to advance a pre-existing military agenda, in a way that is indistinguishable from the cult-like behavior of Mr. Bush supporters in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion.

In reality there is no evidence for any of the reasons we have been offered for why Iran needed to be provoked into an almost inevitable retaliation that Donald Trump is currently tweeting will result in all-out war:

The claim that Mr. Soleimani posed an "imminent threat" is completely without evidence, rumored to be "razor thin", and entirely debunked in "this excellent essay by Craig Murray".

Mike Pences claim that Mr. Soleimani assisted 9-11-01 terrorists is so ridiculous that even the war-loving Washington Post dismissed it.

There is no proof that Mr. Soleimani directed the strike that allegedly killed a United States contractor, or that that contractor even existed.

There is no proof that Mr. Soleimani was involved in any "attack" on any United States embassy, leaving aside the obvious fact that a little graffiti on the walls would not justify his assassination if he did.

The "hundreds of American deaths" line you hear regurgitated by everyone from Donald Trump to Elizabeth Warren actually refers to Iraqis defending themselves from an illegal United States invasion with some training from Iran. The claim that Iran was behind Iraqi bombs is without evidence and would not matter if it were true; claiming the inhabitants of an invaded nation do not have the right to defend themselves is absurd, regardless of where they got their weaponry.

The claim that Mr. Soleimani was "a terrorist" is only made because the branch of the Iranian military he commanded was arbitrarily designated a terrorist organization by the United States government last year, a designation that any foreign government could just as easily make for any branch of the United States military. He was actually a fearsome enemy of ISIS and al-Qaeda and played a massive role in halting the spread of ISIS.

We are being lied to, yet again, about yet another war on yet another geostrategically crucial Middle Eastern nation. And a huge percentage of the population is marching right along with it.

When Iran retaliates for Mr. Soleimanis assassination, these propagandized sheep will be herded by the political-media class into believing that the attack was completely unprovoked. And if their credulity thus far is any indication, they will swallow the whole load without so much as a twinge of gag reflex.

The United States government has a very extensively documented history of lying to advance pre-existing military agendas.

This is an entirely indisputable fact.

It has been universally true from generation to generation, from administration to administration, and from political party to political party.

The Afghanistan Papers came out just a few weeks ago further documenting this already conclusively established fact.

Anyone who just accepts United States government assertions about the need for military force without a mountain of independently verifiable proof is, to put it nicely, a complete f-cking idiot.

The demand for proof would be normal even if the entity in question did not have an extensive history of lying about these things, because, as anyone with even a cursory understanding of logic already knows, the burden of proof is always on the party making the claim.

When it comes to incalculably important matters like life and death, demanding that the burden of proof be met is just being a sensible human being.

Add in the fact that the United States government is known to lie constantly about these matters, and believing its current claims about Mr. Soleimani makes as much sense as believing a known compulsive liar who has deceived you many times when he tells you it is urgent that you go murder your neighbor right this instant.

Debating the current Iran situation, then, is simply a matter of holding the unassailable positions that (A) the United States government lies constantly, and (B) the burden of proof is on the party making the claim.

In a post-Iraq invasion world, the level of proof required is very, very high, and the Donald Trump administration has taken no steps whatsoever to even providing anything that could qualify as evidence.

People will often try to get around this unassailable argument by contending "Well where is your proof that they are lying?"

This is called shifting the burden of proof, and it is a logical fallacy.

I lay this all out not because I expect the United States government to suddenly begin conducting itself rationally or providing proof of its claims that rises to the level required in a post-Iraq invasion world, but because streamlining our thinking in this way helps to avoid confusion in a landscape that is saturated with propaganda and its mindless regurgitators.

The only sane response to United States government claims about the need for military force is intense skepticism.

If United States government officials begin telling us that something happened necessitating military intervention, your default assumption should always, always, always be that they are lying.

And you should hold that position until the (highly unlikely and historically unprecedented) event that conclusive, independently verifiable proof of their claims is provided.

No changes were made after the Iraq invasion to keep the United States government from ever again deceiving United States of Americans into war.

No new laws were made, no policies changed, no war crimes tribunals were held; no one was even fired.

This is because they had every intention of doing it again.

And now here is the United States government again spouting lies about why it was necessary to initiate war with another Middle Eastern nation. And people are swallowing it hook, line and sinker.

The more skepticism we can encourage toward current deceptions about Iran, the easier it will be to encourage skepticism about the next wave of escalations, which make no mistake are absolutely on their way.

Spread the word.

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