July 5, 2017
There has been much
disingenuous criticism of those, like me, who question why the western
corporate media have studiously ignored the latest investigation by renowned
journalist Seymour Hersh on Syria. Hersh had to publish his piece in a German
newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, after the entire US and UK media rejected his
article. There has still been no mention of his investigation more than a week
later.
Those who support, either
explicitly or implicitly, the meddling in Syria’s affairs by hostile foreign
powers are, of course, delighted that Hersh’s revelations are being kept out of
the spotlight. They don’t want every side heard, only their side. And those of
us who expect all the evidence to be aired, so we aren’t corralled into yet
another disastrous “intervention” in the Middle East, are being mischievously
denounced as Assad loyalists.
A good example of this kind of
wilful misrepresentation is by Brian Whitaker, the Guardian’s former Middle
East editor. In a recent
blog post, he has accused me and Media Lens, among others, of being “loyal
supporters of Hersh” – and by insinuation, of Syrian leader Bashar Assad – of
being “sarin denialists”, and of demonstrating blatant hypocrisy in approving
Hersh’s use of anonymous sources when we oppose reliance on such sources by
other journalists.
Before I address these
criticisms, let’s briefly recap on what Hersh’s investigation found.
His sources in the US
intelligence establishment have countered an official narrative – spread by
western governments and the corporate media – that assumes Assad was behind a
chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4. Hersh’s
account suggests that Syria used a conventional bomb to hit a jihadist meeting
in the town, triggering secondary explosions in a storage depot containing
pesticides, fertilisers and chlorine-based decontaminants. A toxic cloud was
created that caused symptoms similar to sarin for those nearby.
Trump was so convinced that
Assad had used sarin in Khan Sheikhoun that he violated international law and
fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase as punishment, even though,
according to Hersh, his own intelligence community disputed that this is what
had happened. Given that Vladimir Putin is closely allied with Assad, the move
had the potential to drag Russia into a dangerous confrontation with the US.
Loyal only to fair debate
So let me address Whitaker’s
allegations.
1/ Neither I nor Media Lens
are “loyal supporters” of Hersh – or Assad. Whitaker is projecting. He has
chosen a side in Syria – that of what he simplistically terms the “rebels”, now
dominated by Al-Qaeda affiliates and ISIS, backed by an unholy alliance of
Saudi Arabia, the US, Europe, Israel and Turkey. But not everyone who opposes
the Islamic extremists, or Whitaker’s group of western interventionists, has
therefore chosen Assad’s side.
One can choose the side of
international law and respect for the sovereignty of nation-states, and object
to states fomenting proxy wars to destabilise and destroy other regimes.
More than that, one can choose
to maintain a critical distance and, based on experience, remain extremely wary
of official and self-serving narratives promoted by the world’s most powerful
states. Some of us think there are lessons to be learnt from the lies we were
told about WMD in Iraq, or a supposedly imminent massacre by Libya’s Muammar
Gaddafi in Benghazi.
These examples of deception
should be remembered when we try to assess how probable is the story that Assad
wanted to invite yet more destructive interference in his country from foreign
powers by gassing his own people – and to no obvious strategic or military
advantage. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me three times, I should just admit
I am a gullible fool.
I and Media Lens (if I may
presume to speak on their behalf as a longtime follower) are not arguing that
Hersh’s account must be right. Just that it deserves attention, and that it
should be part of the media / public discourse. What concerns us is the
inadmissibility of relevant information to the public realm, and concerted
efforts to stifle debate. Manufactured groupthink, it has been repeatedly
shown, works to the benefit of the powerful, those promoting the destructive
interests of a now-global military-industrial complex.
Whitaker and the
interventionists want only the official narrative allowed, the one that serves
their murky political agenda; we want countervailing voices heard too. That
doesn’t make us anyone’s loyalists. It makes us loyal only to the search for
transparency and truth.
Who’s really being flaky?
2/ Whitaker suggests that I
and Media Lens have ascribed the failure by the corporate media to report on
Hersh’s investigation to a “conspiracy”. He argues instead that Hersh has been
ignored because “editors found [his recent Syria] articles flaky”.
Neither I nor Media Lens, of
course, are claiming the corporate media’s decision is a conspiracy. Like most
mainstream journalists, Whitaker shows how ignorant he is of the most famous
critique of his own profession: Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s Propaganda Model.
That posits not a conspiracy by journalists but structural factors that make a
corporate-owned media, one dependent on corporate advertising, incapable of
allowing any meaningful pluralism of the kind that might threaten its own core
interests. That is no more to state a conspiracy than it would be to argue that
corporations are driven by profit. It is simply to recognise the nature of the
beast.
Aside from that, Whitaker
treats Hersh as though he is a one-off – a lone, non-credible voice with a
hidden pro-Assad agenda, using anonymous sources in the US intelligence world,
presumably with the same hidden agenda. Those like me who want Hersh’s account
visible are dismissed as “sarin denialists”, partisans so blinded by our secret
love of Assad that we refuse to admit the evidence staring us in the face.
But Whitaker is
mischaracterising the evidence. The doubts raised by Hersh’s investigation have
been shared by former senior intelligence and security officials, such as
Lawrence Wilkerson, Philip Giraldi and Ray McGovern, as well as journalists
with extensive contacts in the intelligence field, such Robert Parry and Gareth
Porter.
Concerns with the official
narrative have also been raised by undoubted experts on ballistic and chemical
weapons issues, such as Ted Postol and Scott Ritter. They doubt a sarin attack
by Assad’s forces took place, based on technical matters they are well-placed
to judge.
Remember it was Ritter, a
weapons inspector in Iraq, who warned that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs as the US
and UK were making precisely the opposite, mendacious case for war. Ritter’s
voice was excluded from the corporate media in 2002-03, precisely when it might
have pulled the rug from under those in the political and media establishments
cheering on the disastrous US-UK invasion of Iraq.
Whitaker and the
interventionists argue, apparently with a straight face, that this time the
corporate media are silencing Hersh only because of a supposed “flakiness” in
his journalism. So how do they explain the fact that in 2002-03 the same media
silenced experts like Ritter and Hans Blix, former head of the UN agency
monitoring Iraq’s weapons programme, while aggressively promoting entirely
flaky individuals like the supposed Iraqi “opposition leader” Ahmed Chalabi? If
the media considered Ritter and Blix, but not Chalabi, as flaky in the run-up
to the illegal Iraq invasion, maybe it’s time for Whitaker and editors like him
to reassess the meaning of “flaky”.
No hypocrisy over sources
3/ Finally, what of the claim
that it is hypocritical to allow Hersh his anonymous sources when we disapprove
of them in other cases?
First, the issue of using
anonymous sources does not need to be judged according to our own standards,
but rather those of the corporate media. Mainstream editors have repeatedly
proved they have absolutely no problem using anonymous sources when they
support the official narrative, one that promotes war. Liberal papers like the
New York Times are filled most days with stories from unnamed officials,
telling us what we are supposed to believe. The fake “revelations” of Saddam’s
WMD were largely sourced over many months from anonymous officials. Whitaker
himself worked as an editor at the Guardian when it was running similarly
unverifiable stories from anonymous sources.
So our complaints about
Hersh’s treatment are based, in part, on the glaring hypocrisy of journalists
like Whitaker. Why are anonymous sources fine when they confirm the narrative
of the security state, but problematic – “flaky” – when they challenge it? Whitaker
doesn’t have a problem with Hersh using anonymous sources, any more than does
the Guardian, New York Times, New Yorker, or London Review of Books. They have
a problem with Hersh using anonymous sources when those sources say things that
are not supposed to be said.
And second, there is a world
of difference between using anonymous sources to reveal things the powerful do
not want stated, and using anonymous sources to say exactly what the
security state wants to be said but does not want to be held accountable for.
Whistleblowers and those who
challenge the powerful often need protection in the form of anonymity from the
likely retaliation of state actors. Anonymity is never ideal, but sometimes it
is necessary. And when necessary, as in the case of whistleblowers, safeguards
should be put in place. They appear to have been in the case of the Hersh
investigation. Fact-checkers like Scott Ritter were used to ensure the story
was technically plausible, and Welt editors say they were given the identities
of Hersh’s sources. The intelligence officials who spoke to Hersh may be
unknown to the reader, but they are apparently known to the editors overseeing
the story’s publication.
Contrast that to the anonymous
government, military and intelligence officials who regularly brief journalists
anonymously, often to spread what turns out to be misinformation. There is no
reason why any official needs to be unnamed when they are acting as
spokesperson for their government. The only protection such anonymity confers
is protection from accountability.
Tearing apart the left
Finally, it is worth noting
that Syria has become a hugely divisive issue on the left, as Libya did before
it. It has made the left all but powerless to advance any kind of critique of
western imperialism and its current round of violent interference in the Middle
East.
The spirit that spurred the
global marches in 2003 against the attack on Iraq has dissipated. The left’s
confusion allowed Libya to be torn to shreds on the pretext of a non-existent
threat to Benghazi. And now Syria is being wrecked by proxy wars in which the
west is a central, if largely veiled actor.
None of this is accidental.
The US has long had a plan to destabilise and break apart the Middle East –
sometimes referred to by officials as “remaking” it – to better control
the region’s resources. And hand in glove with this plan are efforts to
destabilise and break apart those who should be dissenting from the latest
bouts of western imperialism.
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