I remember in 2003 watching CNN. Operation Shock and Awe had just commenced. To me, a child, it looked as if the targets were random and *everything* was being hit in Baghdad. My father assured me we were only hitting Saddam's military.
In the wake of 9/11, the American public had been convinced that a war in Iraq was just. They were not hard to persuade in the post-attack patriotism and Islamophobia that overtook the nation. One million dead Iraqis later, no weapons of mass destruction had materialized, and it was evident there had never been any. At least, there were no longer any WMDs. The USA had provided cover for Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, but those weapons were long gone.
US foreign policy is rarely rational and always short sighted. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs. Taking him out caused decades of aftershock in the region, and it has not fully subsided. Along with creating a power vacuum in Iraq, the USA emboldened its other enemy, Iran. To say "other enemy" doesn't quite narrow it down as the USA loves making enemies. Saddam was a Sunni nationalist vehemently opposed to the Shia government of Iran. America had shot itself in the foot again by taking out Iran's enemy that only years before had fought a war of attrition that had greatly worn down the Islamic Republic's military capabilities.
One bizarre way the USA made up for strengthening Iran was to make another short sided move. Proxy wars. In 2011 the Syrian civil war began. Syria, being an ally of Iran quickly came under Western media attack and CIA supplied weapons. It didn't matter that the rebels were allied to ISIS until early 2014 and then to AQ until the present day. Thousands of BGM-71 TOW missiles flooded the sectarian battlefield, enflaming the conflict, which would have certainly ended years earlier if it had not been for US action. Once again, the USA lost the war and caused an emboldening of its enemies as well as the creation of new ones, namely ISIS. The CIA knew who they were arming in Syria. It didn't matter as long as they denied it in the complicit media. The American public wouldn't know enough to care.
ISIS was allowed to fester in Syria as a way to put pressure on Bashar al-Assad. John Kerry confirmed as much in a leaked audio recording. This once again backfired, as Russia intervened on Assad's behalf in 2015. ISIS and the rebels were beaten back. At the time of this writing only Idlib province is rebel controlled, and the lines have been static for years. Now Russia, Syria and Iran are in a de facto alliance against US interests in the region.
The war in Ukraine began in 2014. Not 2022, 2014. The media collectively forgot about the overthrow of the Russian backed government, which I had watched live on CNN in 2014. CNN never mentioned this again, and everything suddenly began in February of 2022. NATO expansionism gave Russia, in their eyes, No choice but to invade Ukraine. The media harped on about wars of aggression and that invasions of nations was wrong. The same network that I had watched the bombing and invasion of Iraq endorse 20 years earlier.
My true awakening came in 2016 when I read a news article in a western media outlet, which one I cannot remember. The article claimed to document a speech given by Hezbollah in the town of Al-Eis, Aleppo on a certain date. There was a problem with the date the speech supposedly took place on. By the date of this speech, the town of Al-Eis had been recaptured by rebels for a number of weeks. Only a few westerners in the world would have recognized this as a mistake. I watched the frontlines of the Syrian war hourly for years. I recognized immediately that this western news article was a complete fabrication and no speech ever took place.
This story reminds me a great deal of the book "1984" in which the main character, Winston, Discovers evidence in a newspaper article that certain events previously stated as fact by "the party" had been fabricated. To draw this parallel frightens me. It makes me concerned for the future of objective truth in the world. Perhaps the USA or some other future government will eventually start wiping away the past and changing it to fit their current narrative. I believe this has already begun.
I believe documents of current and past events should be locked away, sealed and buried for future people to find. It may be the only way to communicate with certain possible futures. When in 100, 500 or 5,000 years the time capsule is uncovered, it may shed light on the truth to whoever finds it. Perhaps they are living in a Christian inquisition or an Islamic Caliphate or a totalitarian nation of some form in which information is wiped out and suppressed.
If you are reading this is that possible future, resist.
