The MH17 Disaster Is All America's Fault?
Ron Paul and 'The Nation' want the U.S. to stop blaming poor Russia
By Linda Kinstler, TNR
It’s not just the Russians who are spouting conspiracy theories about Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Americans far right and far left have joined the chorus, propagating the notion that it's the U.S., not Russia, that is ultimately responsible for the catastrophe.
Former Republican Congressman Ron Paul, well-known for his incendiary dispatches, leads the pack. Enraged by the mainstream media’s supposedly negligent reporting of the plane crash, Paul on Sunday published a long indictment of the American press, “What the Mainstream Media Won’t Report About Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.” Chief among the media's alleged failures: “They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored ‘regime change,’ it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.”
Leaving aside the lie that the media “will not report” that the crisis started in November 2013, Paul’s overarching message is one we’ve heard before. It’s the same one that The Nation’s Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel invoked back in May, when they suggested that Washington has secretly and silently become complicit in Obama’s effort to start a new Cold War. As The New Republic's Julia Ioffe wrote of the couple’s critique, “The moral imperative of sticking it to Washington and American hegemony is so pressing, so important, that, in true revolutionary fashion, the facts can easily be subsumed under the greater mission.”
But Paul’s disregard for facts far outpaces that of Cohen and vanden Heuvel. He writes that the mainstream media "will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed no one in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian, targets.” The only thing that matters is that Russia has killed no one in Ukraine; it just armed and trained and let surreptitious “volunteer” forces cross into Ukraine to do the killing on Russia’s behalf.
(More here.)
By Linda Kinstler, TNR
It’s not just the Russians who are spouting conspiracy theories about Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Americans far right and far left have joined the chorus, propagating the notion that it's the U.S., not Russia, that is ultimately responsible for the catastrophe.
Former Republican Congressman Ron Paul, well-known for his incendiary dispatches, leads the pack. Enraged by the mainstream media’s supposedly negligent reporting of the plane crash, Paul on Sunday published a long indictment of the American press, “What the Mainstream Media Won’t Report About Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.” Chief among the media's alleged failures: “They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored ‘regime change,’ it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.”
Leaving aside the lie that the media “will not report” that the crisis started in November 2013, Paul’s overarching message is one we’ve heard before. It’s the same one that The Nation’s Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel invoked back in May, when they suggested that Washington has secretly and silently become complicit in Obama’s effort to start a new Cold War. As The New Republic's Julia Ioffe wrote of the couple’s critique, “The moral imperative of sticking it to Washington and American hegemony is so pressing, so important, that, in true revolutionary fashion, the facts can easily be subsumed under the greater mission.”
But Paul’s disregard for facts far outpaces that of Cohen and vanden Heuvel. He writes that the mainstream media "will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed no one in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian, targets.” The only thing that matters is that Russia has killed no one in Ukraine; it just armed and trained and let surreptitious “volunteer” forces cross into Ukraine to do the killing on Russia’s behalf.
(More here.)
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