Quote of the day – “what we call the moderate opposition”

Speaking of McFaul, he’s been one of the mouthpieces MSNBC has been turning to today for expertise on the downing of the Russian fighter. He’s repeated the same line (or they’ve repeated the video of him using the line – I haven’t been paying close attention) that the Russian government has been targeting not ISIS but “what we call the moderate opposition, what they call terrorists enabled by Turkey.” None of the MSNBC journalists have seen fit to inquire about the reality – well, are they a moderate opposition or terrorists? – or about the strange use of “what we call.”

It sounds like a plain giveaway. If McFaul and those whose bidding he’s doing truly believed that these forces constituted a moderate opposition, he would simply refer to them as that. It seems evident that he doesn’t regard them as moderates (naturally, he’s not even asked what “moderate” means concretely in this context). Note that he doesn’t name the specific groups he’s talking about. Who, specifically, are these alleged moderates? What’s their moderate vision for Syria? What’s their relationship with ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham? Even if “moderates” opposed to the Islamists exist on the ground, how would they become a powerful political force? (I’ve just found a Twitter thread or whatever where these questions were put to McFaul in early October. I guess their only result was the change of wording from “the moderate opposition” to “what we call the moderate opposition.”)

The people of Rojava are open with the media and happy to describe their radically democratic, feminist, ecological movement.* But the US government and its media representatives aren’t publicizing that. They prefer to propagandize about this moderate ghost army that will lead Syria to peace and democracy.

* The article at that link, incidentally, was originally published by teleSUR. Venezuela is yet another country in which the US government’s and media’s hostility to democracy and to anyone who resists their imperialism is on full display. (I wonder what will happen to global oil prices after the legislative elections there on December 6th…)