Context-Free Coverage of Terror Helps Perpetuate Its Causes

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/17/context-free-coverage-terror-helps-perpetuate-its-causes

Nor does the piece asking “why us?” mention that France has been “the most prominent backer of Syria’s armed opposition,” (Guardian, 12/7/12), giving funds to rebels trying to overthrow the Damascus government as early as 2012. When ISIS took advantage of the Syrian civil war to occupy large portions of the country, France doubled down by sending weapons directly to insurgents, with President François Hollande saying that “we should not stop the support that we have given to these rebels who are the only ones to take part in the democratic process” just because such support had helped the apocalyptic ISIS movement to thrive (AFP, 8/21/14).

None of this background was explained when the New York Times (11/14/15) reported Hollande’s assertion that the attacks in Paris were “an act of war,” as though France hadn’t long been making war on ISIS, and repeated without context his claim (using an Arabic acronym for ISIS) that “France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked, will be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh.”

Noting that France’s enthusiasm for military intervention in the Middle East long predated the Paris attacks puts one at risk of being mistaken for an apologist for ISIS war crimes. Indeed, one suspects that fear of such misidentification leads journalists to downplay or omit French violence in describing the context of the attacks. Such willful avoidance of history helps perpetuate the illusion that Western violence is the solution to ISIS’s terror—rather than one of its main causes.