As the west wails about Russian warfare – we must confront their hypocrisy

Shock and Awe. The phrase that defined the savage bombing and shelling of Iraqi cities by the US and its allies during the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Amidst the many other packs of lies that the western media happily carried about that invasion, was the oft peddled fantasy that the west somehow redefined conventional warfare by the use of PGM’s – Precision Guided Munitions. A fantasy figure of 30,000 bombs is peddled by the western backed Human Rights Watch as being the total number dropped from the air on Iraq. Heaven only knows what the true figure is and that doesn’t include the ungodly number of shells from the huge columns of allied tanks and artillery units that pounded Iraqi cities.

Here are a few tastefully selected pictures from Iraq chosen by The Atlantic when it was revisiting the first Iraq War – one of the many occasions where they and Sky News et al offered warmly sanitised ‘coverage’ of western air and land bombardments from the decks of aircraft carriers and long range artillery positions. They decided not to provide any coverage of where the bombs and shells landed, preferring zoomed out coverage of burning skylines and US marines cuddling babies.

That doesn’t look so bad does it? Honour to the fallen US servicemen, pretty flares light up the night sky over Baghdad, children get cuddled and the Iraqi’s applaud gratefully as the evil tyrants statue is toppled – huzzah for the heroic allied forces and their eco-fresh precision bombs!

Here are a few other pictures from Iraq.

You see, wars cannot be waged without soldiers, tanks, aircraft, bombs, shells and guns – and these things are purpose built to kill, maim and destroy. I could post pictures from Kosovo, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine. I could upload photographs of dead civilians killed by US drone strikes, dead Iraqi children killed by US sanctions and I would be just scratching the surface of civilian victims of western weapons and sanctions.

It is more important than ever to remember all this in the context of Ukraine. Since Russia, an adversary of the West is the aggressor – the western corporate media is falling over itself to weep over the horrors of this war – in stark contrast to their soft focus coverage of western wars and western backed regimes.

When you see western journalists on Sky News and C4 News bewailing the ‘brutality’ and ‘savagery’ of the hellish Russian assault in Ukraine this is an opportunity to see – to truly see – what the West routinely gets up to in other people’s countries. War is always brutal – it is always savage.

Death and destruction are the same whoever is firing the weapons and whatever excuses and rationalisations are offered. If we allow western wartime propaganda to put Russian armies under a microscope while placing tasteful window dressing around western armies and the munitions they supply to Israel and Saudi Arabia, then we lay the ground for the next western atrocity in a far away land.

150,000 civilians have been killed in Yemen. A war that the west has supported with US weapons and British military expertise. Sky News doesn’t have much to say about Yemen – doesn’t do many interviews in Sana’a . Throw in another 100,000+ dead civilians in Palestine – an illegal invasion and occupation supported en toto by the West – but the BBC isn’t often in Gaza to document the results of British support for illegal wars.

When you watch western coverage of Russian warfare, be rightly appalled and campaign for peace and justice – but spare a thought for those who have died from and those who remain under the tyranny of western munitions.

Since 2013 I have worked on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and speaking simple truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.     

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