Over 12 million US casualties in Syria
I just returned from Syria as one of a small group of Western observers that was invited by their new constitutional election commission and the Speaker of Syria's Parliament.
The adjustment has not only included the usual 24-hour jet lag, but also having to get used to not having AK-47 security guards around all the time, and traveling in armored SUVs with police escorts to get through red lights and busy traffic. But I don't miss the shelling at all.
After my pre-election Press TV piece on June 3rd, Bombs and Ballots in Damascus, our schedule there turned into a whirlwind of interviewing and being interviewed, so we could grab as much as we could to bring back and build on. A typical day was three to four hours of sleep max.
The "evade and escape" security drivers drove like madmen. If you were in the front seat you just had to close your eyes sometimes and hope for the best, especially when passing a truck in the opposite lane on a blind curve.
Such situations are commonly referred to as "information overload", so I saw the challenge right away about dumping so much on people when I came back that would probably not stick, as they would just be overwhelmed. Nothing is a bigger defeat for a journalist than to return from the field with lots of great raw material, and then have it have no impact on the public psyche.
I have been around long enough in this business to have learned that if you cannot get people's attention to read an article, how good it is becomes a moot point. They can't care if they don't read. We writers and editors can live or die on how good a title is for getting people to begin reading an article. So I decided to not risk "test marketing" attention-grabbing headlines when I got back, as you only get one shot at it really.
I decided it was safer to do so with the Syrian people, even if it was still a bit risky as they obviously have a different mindset. But they were all that I had, and I knew I could see their reactions clearly.
We were mobbed by the mainly Arab media in Damascus, because we were the creatures from outer space who had been allowed into the country after the government had earlier taken the position that it was pointless to let observers in, as they would just trash the election, even if they had to be forced to. ButIran has had a lot of experience in bringing independent Western groups over there, and offered to help with cherry-picking some fair-minded people and doing it quickly.
The track record of our writing for Press TV put me squarely on the list. They didn't "draw straws". They wanted not only fair minded observers, but those with some demonstrated abilities to get their stories out in a hostile corporate media environment when they got home. The support we have gotten from Press TV readers also played a role in proving our ability to pull international readers, so we thank you all for that. You are a key part of the team.
Our goal was to report on the validity of the election and to somehow help stop this senseless slaughter and destruction of Syria, to the shame of our respective countries. So frankly, those stakes made it the biggest journalism challenge of my career.
As I shot photos and video of the other observers being interviewed, I heard an endless slew of questions and answers, many of them what you would generally expect. I saw the trap of having to get out of the "generally expected" mode as people don't tend to get shaken up by that. I needed something different...something stronger, and at one point it came to me like a silver bullet between the eyes.
I knew I had to somehow put Western people, and especially Americans, right into the shoes of the Syria people to experience the scale of the carnage that has gone on there. Over the past three years the West had developed what we call in the media business, a "tin ear" to the daily reports. They become numb to the ongoing tragedy. So I got my calculator out and ran some numbers on what the killed would be if extrapolated onto the American population. The numbers so shocked me I had to redo them three times to make sure I had not made a mistake.
The 160,000 killed in Syria came out to around 2 million American KIA's if such had been inflicted on us. I knew instantly that this was my Rosetta Stone for penetrating the American tin ears. It could be delivered as a question. "How would you feel if local insurgents and a large group of foreign sponsored terrorists had come to the US and killed 2 million of us when we had done nothing to threaten them?"
This is the classic "boxing them in" question, aggressive yes... but works when it eliminates all the gray area diversionary discussions. I started testing this out on the Syrians during my interviews and saw the heads nodding right away and I knew I had found my silver bullet. After a day, a way to enhance this huge KIA number popped into my head. The US only had 350,000 total dead during WWII. I will let that sink in with you for a moment.
So dividing that 350,000 into the 2 million figure gives us having played a key role in inflicting six WWII's upon Syria in terms of the numbers of dead...an incredible statistic that our dear friends in corporate media with all of their money and manpower conveniently have overlooked. Imagine that.
And last, part three of this triple play came soon after. It had been in the back of my mind that we had not been seeing any wounded figures from Syrians. I did not have time to dig one out from the government so I used the conservative estimation of five wounded for every KIA, which generated 10 million more US comparatives, giving me a 12 million casualties number to work with.
If someone had done this to America, their country would be a parking lot now. But in Syria's case their Speaker of the Parliament told us they were holding foreign fighters from 85 countries, something that shocked our whole group, as it represented a rather sizable unofficial world war against Syria, minus all the various triggers of the last one, including Pearl Harbor.
And despite this ongoing horror, I did not find a single Syrian that held any animosity toward the American people. They are a politically sophisticated people and fully understand that Americans know little about Syria and have been heavily propagandized. I found them a gracious and forgiving people, more than I would have been, I must admit. The Syrian people had presented no feasible threat to those 85 countries.
Syria has turned into a mega gang-rape via the scourge of diplomatic immunity for state sponsored terrorism, which I have editorialized upon during the Syrian crisis. In my book, we are talking a major crime against humanity here, which is why I have been urging in my columns that we need to get the issue of diplomatic immunity for state terrorism onto the international public discussion table, and quickly.
I knew I could use these comparative numbers to bridge the wide gap for Americans having any understanding for why Assad was overwhelming re-elected and how shamelessly petty the White House's trashing of the election's validity has been.
I can ask older Americans to remember back during the early years of WWII when we were fearing possible invasion by Japan, and the terrible losses we had incurred at the beginning of the war. I can ask them do they remember how united the country was under attack like that, and how crazy it would have been for an opposition to claim that Roosevelt had only won re-election due to its being rigged?
This is a journalistic tactic of associating a new situation with a past one that you know is deeply imbedded within the person you are trying to help cross over the river. Yes, I know some will say it is an emotional ploy, but it is appropriate. I saw and heard so much emotion in Syria, that I could write about it for weeks. I will be using some of my video to let you see and hear, as it is much stronger than words.
I had planned the usual chronological travelogue piece, but pulled back on that as I felt something more powerful was needed, because the Syrian people deserve it.
I promised them I would do the best I could. I will do the travelogue piece on election day as a follow-up. You can let me know in the comments if I earned my airfare. And I will make adjustments as needed, as this is a team effort in which your input plays a key role.
We have to stop not only the Syrian war as soon as possible, but also any others that "certain parties" might have in the planning stages, like the brinksmanship we have seen in Ukraine.
We all know that in the end, we pay for these tragedies, one way or another. There are no bystanders, because the terrorists love to kill them, too.
JD/NN
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/06/12/366609/over-12m-us-casualties-in-syria/