Public Health Policy Reviews 16:
20 Years of US Military Domination in the Middle East – Part 3 – Syria – Civil War and Humanitarian Crisis.
A destroyed part of the Syrian city of Ar Raqqah in 2017. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
NOTE: Nazia Saeed, a Human Resources professional living in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, contributed significant research and writing for parts of this article.
**********
“Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you could not awaken? How would you know the difference between dream and reality?” –Morpheus (The Matrix, 1999).
**********
If you are like us and wonder how US President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats can be so dismissive of the humanitarian crisis happening in Gaza, we submit the thirteen-year Syrian Civil War for context.
When Biden was Vice President during the eight-year Barack Obama Presidential administration (2009 – 2016) - the two men oversaw civil war quagmires in Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Africa, and Syria.
President Obama was elected based on a campaign slogan and a national American campaign mantra of Hope and Change. That utopian dream quickly became a nightmare for many who hoped the new administration’s optimism would include changes to traditional US political policy in the Middle East.
**********
Simulacra and Simulation
Theatrical release and DVD poster for The Matrix (1999). Image: Wikipedia Commons.
Remember the classic 1999 science fiction movie The Matrix?
The foundation of The Matrix movie is a 1981 philosophical dissertation titled Simulacra and Simulation, written by the sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007).
Baudrillard’s thesis was that the media and the symbolism of modern culture are transforming our collective perceptions of reality. The symbols and projections we create to represent our society enthrall us so much that we start to mistake them for reality.
President Biden, the Democratic Party, and social elites in the mainstream media are currently working together to obscure the objective realities of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The Syrian Civil War received the same treatment from President Obama and his political allies in 2011.
**********
Syria: Civil War and Humanitarian Crisis
A Syrian boy plays on a swing in a destroyed building in the rebel-held town of Douma, on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, Sept. 3, 2017. Photo image courtesy of voanews.com.
Just like the current crisis in Gaza, the Syrian Civil War, which erupted in 2011 - unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.
The conflict has resulted in widespread population displacement, destruction of healthcare facilities, and a breakdown of essential services. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military, Russian special forces units supporting Assad, and the Syrian rebels have all deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers.
Consequently, millions of Syrians have suffered without access to adequate healthcare and medical treatment since 2011. US involvement in the Syrian conflict, through military support to the rebel groups and airstrikes against the Assad regime, has only exacerbated the situation.
The fragmentation of the country, multiple international armies, and regional armed militias hinder humanitarian aid efforts - exacerbating the violence and creating multiple public health crises in Syria.
**********
American actor Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix (1999). Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
In the second act of The Matrix, a team of “Agents” and police officers, led by “Agent Smith” captures computer programmer Thomas Anderson – known by his illegal hacking alias “Neo.”
Agent Smith places Neo into an interrogation room and begins to question him. Smith asks Neo to help the agents capture another computer hacker named Morpheus in exchange for amnesty. Neo declines the offer with an obscene gesture toward Agent Smith and demands his legally obligated phone call. Smith then asks Neo, “What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?”
Neo discovers that his voice is suddenly gone. The skin on his lips begins to fuse horrifically. Similarly, millions of people in North America and Western Europe are silent as mass deaths from militarized violence, famine, infectious diseases, and mental health disorders afflict the populations of both Gaza and Syria.
**********
Children at a refugee camp in Syria. Photo image courtesy of disasterphilanthropy.org.
Conservative estimates of the death toll in Syria because of the civil war range somewhere between 580,000 and 619,000 people.
The conflict displaced millions more Syrian migrants, forcing them to flee to other Middle Eastern regions and international countries. The horror of ethnic cleansing also happened in Syria. It took the form of Turkish military forces against the Kurdish people and Shiite Muslims against Sunni Muslims.
Yet, people forget that the Syrian Civil War was encouraged by former President Obama and his motivation to spread “Hope and Change” to the Middle East – along with Vice President Joe Biden and their elitist allies in Western Europe.
The mainstream international media obscures the fact that Obama and Biden promoted the revolutionary “Arab Spring” social movements in Middle Eastern societies from 2011 through 2012.
**********
The “Red Pill”
Photo by Roman Davydko on Unsplash.
The third act of The Matrix features a meeting between the hacker Neo and rebel leader Morpheus.
Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two otherwise nondescript oral pills in his hands. One pill is blue. The other pill is red.
The blue pill represents the “beautiful prison.” It will allow Neo to continue languishing in ignorance, living in confined comfort without want or fear within the matrix’s computer-simulated reality.
Morpheus explains to Neo, “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.”
On Morpheus’s other hand, there is the red pill. “You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland – and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes,” says Morpheus.
**********
“Arab Spring”
Over 100,000 Bahrainis participated in the “March of Loyalty to Martyrs” in Manama, Bahrain, during the “Arab Spring” movement in 2011. Photo image courtesy Wikipedia Commons.
The original “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia in December 2010.
Government corruption and economic depression sparked protests and civil uprisings across the region. Popular rebellions also occurred in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and Yemen.
Unfortunately, most people in America and Europe forgot that the outcome of most of the “Arab Spring” protests from 2010 through 2012 ended with violent repressions of civilians across the Middle East. But the people in Syria, Yemen, and the rest of the Middle East remember.
The violence led to the civil wars in Syria and Yemen that are still raging today. As we wrote yesterday, the Obama and Biden policies in the Middle East were a complete disaster for the region.
**********
Photo by Sebastian Mark on Unsplash.
Neo chooses the “red pill” and joins the rebellion.
The “red pill” frees Neo from the enslaving control of the machine-generated dream world of the matrix and allows him to escape from his simulacra of prison into the real world.
Unfortunately, Neo had to spend a lot of time figuring out what was happening to him in both the simulated world of the matrix and the real world. After the red pill threw him down the proverbial rabbit hole, his life became infinitely more complex.
As Morpheus said, “I can only show you the door. You are the one that has to walk through it.” Likewise, we can only inform you of the massive amount of death and destruction that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are responsible for in the Middle East and North Africa.
Remember President Obama’s 2012 “red line” for using chemical weapons in Syria? It looks A LOT like President Biden’s “red line” for Rafah - in Gaza.
**********
“(Media) Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their conclusions.” -Bari Weiss, a former New York Times writer and editor – lamenting her departure from the media company in 2020.
**********