The war in Syria is unique in the history of the world – and lessons learned from it can be applied to understanding all current conflicts.
This doesn’t mean that all conflicts are exactly the same, not at all, but that Syria has revealed the workings, motivations, hypocrisy, and deceits of the US/West war mongers and their allies which are present in other wars (both overt and covert) as well. If you have questions about Syria and the war there, will you please, please, just ask me? How is it unique? Simple answer:
Because the Syrian government kept the internet open and for the first time, human beings outside a war were able to connect real time with human beings experiencing the conflict. Many Syrians study English in school and have been courageous enough to share their experiences, thoughts, news etc even when terrorists were monitoring their pages and targeting them for intimidation, kidnapping, even death.
Their videos, photos, and insights allowed those of us following it to monitor the situation hour by hour, day by day, year by year. That information usually (almost always) contradicted the official stories by our governments and media reporting and led to an obsession for finding out the truth. Our information therefore was not filtered by government bureaucrats or media “war sells news so news sells wars” moguls.
In addition to the internet and social media input which came from all sides of the conflict for perspective, the Syrian government also allowed not only “professional” journalists on the ground access but hundreds of independent journalists, citizen journalists and researchers (like me), delegations, even tourists to come into the country. Many folks have said to me, “you were only allowed in because you support the government” while completely missing the point that small armies of “professional” journalists with far greater audiences were also allowed in who were staunchly against the government there.
They also miss the point that when beginning my research on the war back in 2012, I was as clueless as most Americans still are about US foreign policy. As I’ve said many times, it was because of that ignorance that I used to believe the lies of the war mongers and had naïve trust in the “news” media. But after eight years of non-stop research and seven extended trips traveling around Syria during the war, mostly on my own with Syrian friends as translators and guides as a 100% non-affiliated, self-funded citizen journalist, my naiveté, ignorance and trust are gone, completely and forever gone.
Forgive my crude language, but this is the reality: After being completely immersed in researching the war against Syria and tracking how similar strategies and tactics are employed by the US/West against other countries, I can say this – that the foreign policies and actions of the US/West can be described with two simple phrases – sh*t show and cluster f*uck.
And until Americans, Europeans, Canadians, Australians etc WAKE UP to this fact, these wide spread, large scale, murderous, and ultimately self-destructive policies and actions will continue – and will increasingly be used against us, the citizens of the western countries also.I’ve attached these photos to show a tiny fraction of the places I’ve been in beautiful Syria and just some of the unforgettable interactions with the people there, many of whom have become family.
Below are a series of striking images with important comments attached from Janice Kortkamp’s multiple trips to Syria:
