On The Idiotic Partisan Debate Over Regime Change In Iran Or Syria by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2020-01-06 at 23:20:59 )

On The Idiotic Partisan Debate Over Regime Change In Iran Or Syria by Ms Caitlin Johnstone

I love my job. Really, I do. But writing about United States military agendas for a living often brings one into contact with such staggering stupidity that all you can do is pause and wonder how our species survived past the invention of the pointy stick.

By far the dumbest thing in all of United States politics is the fact that Democrats tend to support regime change in Syria, while Republicans tend to support it more in Iran.

I am not talking about the elected officials in those parties; I am talking about the ordinary rank-and-file Joes and Janets who stand absolutely nothing to gain from toppling either Damascus or Tehran, but who have been brainwashed by lifelong media consumption into supporting one or the other anyway.

Whenever I write against the United States governments longstanding agenda to replace the leadership of Tehran with a compliant puppet regime, I know with absolute certainty that I am going to spend the rest of my time online arguing with Donald Trump supporters and lifelong Republicans.

Whenever I write against the United States governments longstanding agenda to do the same in Syria, I know with absolute certainty that I am going to be arguing predominantly with so-called centrist liberals.

At no time has this ever failed to occur.

I have spent the last few days arguing with Donald Trump supporters who are telling me I am crazy for not celebrating the death of an Iranian general they had no idea existed one week ago, and many of these pro bono State Department propagandists began following my work because they liked what I have been saying about Syria.

Conversely, all the fauxgressives and liberal interventionists who spent all last month telling me I am a monster for writing about leaked OPCW documents showing we were lied to about an alleged 2018 chemical weapons incident have been staying out of my social media notifications completely these past four days.

It is truly bizarre. And it is truly, deeply, profoundly stupid.

It is truly, deeply and profoundly stupid because the agenda to topple Irans government and the agenda to topple Syrias government are not two separate agendas.

They are the same.

Supporting one while opposing the other is like wanting to shoot someone in the head but being morally opposed to shooting them in the heart.

Syria and Iran are allies.

Eliminating one government necessarily hurts the other.

Iran has been helping Syria to win the war against foreign-backed extremist proxy fighters who nearly succeeded in toppling Damascus before its allies stepped in, and should Syria succeed in rebuilding itself (something the Donald Trump administration is actively preventing it from doing) we can be sure it would return the favor when called upon.

The United States governments agenda to "take out" all noncompliant governments in the Middle East is completely removed from any consideration for United States of American party politics.

It is one unified agenda, and the more the imperial blob succeeds in weakening any of the remaining unabsorbed nations, the easier it gets to absorb the others.

Supporting regime change in Iran but not Syria, or vice-versa, is for this reason an inherently absurd position to take.

If you opposed Barack Obamas attempt to topple Damascus via Timber Sycamore-armed proxies, it is absurd for you to support any maneuvers which could lead to the elimination of Syrias key ally in that fight.

If you oppose Donald Trumps current warmongering toward Iran, it is absurd for you to support the elimination of one of Irans remaining friends in the region.

If Iran falls you may be sure that Syria will fall next, and vice versa.

It is the same box being ticked; you are just arguing over whether it should be a left-handed or right-handed check mark.

But such is the strength of propaganda.

The perception managers of the United States war machine have successfully manipulated the voting public into a debate not about whether regime change interventionism should happen, but which regime change intervention should happen first.

In a sense it is quite brilliant; we may be quite sure that government agency departments responsible for domestic perception management on United States foreign policy have discussed this precise dynamic at length.

But in another sense it is quite mundane: the recent Republican presidents have pursued regime change in Iran, while Barack Obama pursued it in Syria, so Republicans support Republican interventions while Democrats support Democratic ones.

This has nothing to do with any substantial difference in these agendas (again, it is actually one agenda) and everything to do with what each faction can be more easily propagandized toward.

Liberal hearts are easier to grab with horror stories about a monster who gasses babies for no reason and less concerned about refugee crises and the persecution of Syrian Christians, while Republicans are much easier to manipulate into despising a theocracy run by Muslims.

And of course there is overlap; people who prioritize mass murder above all else like John Bolton and Lindsey Graham will cheer enthusiastically for as much military interventionism as they can get in either country (or any country, really).

But by and large, especially among the rank-and-file, people tend to support the interventions their respective presidents propagandized them into supporting. Propaganda is pretty much the only thing the presidential "bully pulpit" is used for.

Because Iraq has poisoned the idea, each mainstream faction may deny actually wanting the United States to oust the government of Iran or Syria.

Donald Trump supporters who still stand by the anti-interventionist platform he falsely campaigned on may say "I do not want war with Iran, I just want Iranians to get their freedom and I think it is awesome they killed Mr. Solamumi or however you spell it."

Liberals might say "I do not want interventionism! I just support the Freedom Fighters" in Idlib and want Mr. Assad to stop murdering civilians for fun and sexual gratification."

But circulating propaganda narratives about governments targeted for regime change is supporting regime change.

You are participating in it as surely as if you had deployed the Tomahawk missiles yourself.

Yesterday someone told me that everyone at Qassem Soleimanis incredibly massive funeral procession was attending because they were forced to.

When I asked him if he was claiming that every single one of those millions of people were publicly mourning because they had been literally forced at gunpoint, he told me no: many were forced in the sense that state propaganda was all they had ever known, so they were psychologically coerced into grieving Mr. Soleimani.

"I do not accept that your -state propaganda their whole lives- model is any more coercive or fascistic than the kind that causes United States of Americans to turn up to pro- and anti-Trump rallies,"

I said. "United States of Americans are no less propagandized than Iranians. If anything it is worse, since United States of Americans do not know they are being propagandized."

"You have got it backwards," he said. "Iranians do not know they are being propagandized because they only have one source of information.

The United States knows it because we have sides screaming it to other sides all the time and the freedom of information and thought to come to our own conclusions."

"Nonsense," I replied. "Nearly all United States of Americans are propagandized to the gills. They are probably the most aggressively propagandized population on earth, just because so much depends on their swallowing propaganda. It is just a more scientific sort."

"And yet here we are, talking about it freely without worrying about swallowing a bullet," he said.

"Here I am arguing with a man who just so happens to be striving very, very hard to convince me to swallow the exact same narrative that Mike Pompeo is trying to convince me to swallow," I replied.

The greatest asset of the propagandists is the belief that we have not been propagandized.

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