Sept. 5, 2013
Should We Trust the Government's
Claims About Syria?
James Bovard
From
USA Today
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are adamant that
the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack on Syrian
civilians last month. They have thus far provided the public scant hard
information to back up their claims. Even Obama ally Sen. Tom Harkin
(D-Iowa) characterized the evidence in a Sunday Capitol Hill classified
briefing as "circumstantial."
Perhaps the Assad regime did commit this brutal attack. But can we expect
the U.S. government to be honest about an alleged atrocity which the
president is invoking to sanctify his foreign policy?
History is not reassuring on that score. During World War II, the
Roosevelt administration worked ceaselessly to present Soviet dictator
Josef Stalin as a friendly quasi-democratic type -
"
Uncle Joe." However, in 1940, after the Soviets seized much of
Poland, the Soviets executed
22,000 Polish
officers and intellectuals in the Katyn Forest in western Russia.
When the German army discovered the mass grave site in 1943, the
Roosevelt administration rushed to blame the killings on the
Nazis.
Whitewashing the Katyn Forest massacre helped blindfold both American
policymakers and the American public regarding the brutality of the
Soviet Union. This deceit helped the Soviets cement control of Poland and
other East European nations after World War II.
Last year, the National Archives finally declassified a thousand pages of
documents that exposed the U.S. government coverup of Soviet
responsibility. The
Associated Press noted, "The White House maintained its silence
on Katyn for decades, showing an unwillingness to focus on an issue that
would have added to political tensions with the Soviets during the Cold
War." The record showed that the U.S. had plenty of proof from 1943
onward that the Soviets were guilty. But when Polish-American radio
stations in Detroit and Buffalo began broadcasting the details of the
killings during World War II, the Roosevelt administration
"
brusquely silenced them," as historian Thomas Fleming noted in
his book, The New Dealers War.
Last year's revelations happened in large part because of pressure from
Congresswoman
Marcy Kaptur, whose Ohio district includes many Polish Americans. It
took 69 years for the U.S. government to disclose that it had deceived
the American people regarding one of World War II's landmark
atrocities.
Read the full article.
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