In the context of those deaths, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, who has built her career as a supposed humanitarian advocating a "responsibility to protect" civilians, laid the blame not on the Israeli military but on fighters in Gaza who had fired rockets that rarely hit anything besides sand.
At the United Nations on July 18, 2014, Power said, "President Obama spoke with [Israeli] Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning to reaffirm the United States' strong support for Israel's right to defend itself... Hamas' attacks are unacceptable and would be unacceptable to any member state of the United Nations. Israel has the right to defend its citizens and prevent these attacks."
But that universal right apparently does not extend to Syria where U.S.-supplied rockets are fired into civilian neighborhoods of west Aleppo. In that case, Power and other U.S. officials apply an entirely different set of standards. Any Syrian or Russian destruction of east Aleppo with the goal of suppressing that rocket fire becomes a "war crime."
Perhaps it's expected that the U.S. government, like other governments, will engage in hypocrisy regarding affairs of state: one set of rules for U.S. allies and another for countries marked for U.S. "regime change." Statements by supposed "humanitarians" -- such as Samantha Power, "Ms. R2P" -- are no exception.
But double standards are even more distasteful when they come from allegedly "objective" journalists such as those who work at The New York Times, The Washington Post and other prestige American news outlets. When they take the "U.S. side" in a dispute and become crude propagandists, they encourage the kind of misguided "group thinks" that led to the criminal Iraq War and other disastrous "regime change" projects over the past two decades.
Yet, that is what we normally see. A thoughtful reader can't peruse the international reporting of the U.S. mainstream media without realizing that it is corrupted by propaganda from both government officials and from U.S.-funded operations, often disguised as "human rights activists" or "citizen journalists" whose supposed independence makes their "propo" even more effective.
So, it's worth noting those rare occasions when The New York Times and the rest of the MSM let some of the reality peek through. When evaluating the latest plans from Hillary Clinton and other interventionists to expand the U.S. military intervention in Syria -- via prettily named "safe zones" and "no-fly zones" -- the American people should realize that they are being asked to come to the aid of Al Qaeda.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com's "The De Facto US/Al Qaeda Alliance."]
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