Russia Today (RT) is making the tendentious claim that more civilians have been killed by US airstrikes over Mosul than by Russian & Syrian airstrikes over Aleppo–& further that there is less media coverage of US bombing operations in Mosul than of Syrian & Russian operations in Aleppo.
It’s about time a Russian propaganda medium acknowledges that Syria & Russia bombed civilians in Aleppo but anyone who reiterates that shameful rubbish belies either political credulity or a complete lack of investigative integrity. There has never been an honest accounting in any war of troop deaths by the US Pentagon & certainly none of civilian deaths. To suggest Syria or Russia would be different makes a mockery even of propaganda. There isn’t even an official international monitor of civilian deaths in any of the many & constant wars.
There are independent sources like AirWars which estimate civilian deaths by culling from media, human rights groups, the UN, sources within the war zones, etc. but this is approximating at best. RT’s report drew on Air Wars which is one of the more credible & comprehensive sources. Interesting RT was not as disturbed as its fan base that AirWars receives funding from the George Soros foundation.
No one really knows how many people are buried in rubble in Aleppo–other than those who lost loved ones but were not interviewed by human rights monitors before being deported out of Aleppo on buses hours after the Syrian army took over. With US airstrikes over Mosul ongoing, who is monitoring civilian deaths whilst thousands flee for their lives?
This comparison schtick is pathetic because mainstream media (considered anathema to Assad & Putin supporters), has quite a lot of coverage about Mosul, as there was about Aleppo even though reporters were not allowed in the country. There is much more coverage of the sieges in Aleppo & Mosul than of Somalia, Yemen, Libya for which there is almost none.
What’s repugnant is viewing the two military offensives as a competition of some kind, a kind of one-up-man-ship game between Russia & the US rather than of a piece with foreign military intervention in the Middle East that must be opposed unconditionally. Where’s the outrage over war crimes in both Aleppo & Mosul? Why instead the sneering, small-minded comparisons that are not even real? There are human lives involved here.
Fighting ISIS or al-Qaeda begins with withdrawing all foreign military operations & cutting off the munitions network to ISIS fighters, including from Russia & the US. Bombing cities with millions of civilians is not the way to fight ISIS & isn’t intended as such so much as it is a justification for occupation. The only principled approach to foreign intervention is to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all military forces. Now.
(Photo of Iraqis, including one who is injured, fleeing Mosul, March 13th by Ari Jalal/Reuters)