Media ignoring other wars, suffering across globe

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, April 12, 2022

The U.S. media focus on the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been an unrelenting 24/7 media venture. We are bombarded daily with war updates, refugee flights, the tragedies of war, and the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people against the Russians’ Goliath. As a result, Ukrainian support, solidarity and relief programs have appeared nationwide overnight. Both the support of Ukraine and the near universal condemnation of Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion is appropriate, justified and needed.

However, there is one critical reality here that all Americans need to acknowledge. That reality is the corporate media’s response when the United States is the aggressor and the destroyer of nations. Three current examples include our protracted wars against both Iraq and Afghanistan and our current support of the Saudis as they engage in wholesale slaughter and genocide in Yemen. As a result, over a million Iraq children perished and we can’t even begin to quantify the other causalities suffered by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the on-going Saudi slaughter in Yemen made possible with U.S. weaponry constitutes some of the new centuries greatest war crimes.

The point is that the U.S. corporate media for decades have been silent with regard to these historic war crimes and tragedies. The decades long plight of the Afghan people has never been a sustaining headline and the on-going tragedy in Yemen continues to be minimized if not outright ignored.

As a nation, as people, we need to condemn any and all “military actions” that involve foreign invasions. Adopting that vision is the only way we’ll be able to put an end to the incredible media omissions that have allowed for those unbelievable and ongoing tragedies that we are directly responsible for.

Jim Sawyer

Edmonds