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The popular cliché has it that we live in a “post-truth” world. Indeed, truth today is beset by an unprecedented volume of falsehoods thanks to social media and fragmented audiences. But the same technologies that amplify falsehoods also help make truth more accessible. Falsehood may have mass, but truth has resilience.
Ultimately, all lies are fragile because they are vulnerable to facts. And new technologies have made facts more abundant and verifiable. The danger that we face then is not that truth has become precarious, but that avoiding it has become easier.
Ultimately, all lies are fragile because they are vulnerable to facts.
Take Reese Erlich’s recent article on Syria in which he makes a strong case against the recent U.S., British, and French strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities. To support his judgment that there was “no legal or moral right to bomb Syria,” Erlich makes several contradictory claims that seem to follow Freud’s “logic of dreams.”
Citing journalist Robert Fisk, he argues that there might not have been a chemical attack; citing the right-wing tabloid Daily Express, he argues that the chemical attack might have been carried out by Jaish al Islam; citing regime employees, he argues that the Barzeh Research Center was merely producing “antidotes for snake bites and children’s medicine;” citing his own book, he alleges that the al-Nusra Front had carried out a sarin attack against Syrian troops in 2013.
Each one of these claims is false. A chemical attack did take place. Moreover, as The Progressive noted in a follow-up article, Fisk’s claims were contradicted by other journalists who were on the same trip. The chemical weapons were airdropped by the regime using a distinct delivery mechanism, which rules out Jaish al Islam, which doesn’t have an air force, as a possible culprit; the Barzeh Scientific Studies Research Center (SSRC) has been declared by the regime itself as part of its chemical weapon production infrastructure (and it is headed by Amr Armanazi, the man in charge of Syria’s chemical weapon programme); and there is no evidence that al-Nusra Front carried out a sarin attack in 2013 or at any other time.
There is no evidence that al-Nusra Front carried out a sarin attack in 2013 or at any other time.
None of this should have been up for speculation. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry has investigated and confirmed at least 34 uses of chemical weapons in Syria before the April attack, and in none of them has it found the opposition responsible. Tellingly, both the Commission of Inquiry and the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Joint Investigative Mechanism have confirmed that the regime was responsible for the April 2017 sarin attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. The sarin samples from Khan Sheikhoun also match the ones used in the August 2013 attack on Eastern Ghouta and the March 2013 attack on Khan al-Asal.
So when Erlich justifies his speculation by alleging that “both sides have used chemical weapons,” he is creating a false equivalence. And when he says that “it may be as difficult to determine what happened in Douma as it has been in previous alleged chemical attacks,” he is ignoring that in previous instances difficulties arose entirely because of Russian and Syria government obstruction.
As I have noted elsewhere: Syria is in fact the most documented conflict in history, every aspect of which has been photographed, filmed, recorded, analysed, and investigated. The accumulated evidence paints a picture that is not at all equivocal. In the judgment of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry the regime is responsible for “the crimes against humanity of extermination; murder; rape or other forms of sexual violence; torture; imprisonment; enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts.”
It should be possible to make a case against Western intervention without having to whitewash the regime. One cannot start with a conclusion and then cherry-pick facts—or falsehoods—to support it. If the case against intervention is a moral rather than a dogmatic one, then it has to be honest and principled, and avoid contradictions. It will have to explain, for example, why the 15,201 Western airstrikes in Syria that preceded the Douma attack failed to stir anti-imperialists into action; why is it that only a threat to the regime spurs protest?
One cannot start with a conclusion and then cherry-pick facts—or falsehoods—to support it.
It is a good thing that in the wake of Iraq more Westerners have become conscious of the unforeseen consequences of intervention. But shouldn’t the crisis in Syria force us to also consider the foreseen consequences of inaction?
Erlich mentions legality in the context of the missing Security Council mandate. But Security Council approval determines legality in a very narrow sense. The Security Council isn’t a neutral adjudicating body; it is an exclusive club of major powers who all protect their respective clients and interests. In the case of Syria, this means Putin’s will could determine what is or isn’t legal. By contrast, there are concrete laws that govern conduct during war, placing constraints on belligerents—and the Syrian regime has violated every one of them. Shouldn’t this illegality concern us more since its moral basis is unambiguous?
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a lecturer in digital journalism at the University of Stirling. He is on Twitter: @im_pulse