Do something. Kill someone.

Over the last few days I have seen floods of emotional demands on social media that somebody should do something about reported gas attacks in Syria. These appeals are sometimes accompanied by gruesome pictures of unknown provenance.

I haven’t seen any actual media reports of these gas attacks. Perhaps that it because the South African media have been so preoccupied with reactions to Jacob Zuma’s recent cabinet changes that demands for regime change in South Africa have taken precedence over demands for regime change in Syria and the United States.

The demands on social media that someone should “do something” do, however, appear to be media driven, and there seems to be an Alice in Wonderland quality of unreality about them. As the Queen of Hearts proclaimed, it seems to be sentence first, then the verdict, then the evidence.

I think this article is worth reading Disharmony: The religious response to Syria’s travails is prolix and confused | The Economist:

Generally, the local Catholic and Orthodox churches remain reluctant to condemn Bashar al-Assad, whom they regard as their protector against the furies of Islamism. That in turn influences the hierarchs and adherents of those churches in other places. Meanwhile, some luminaries of America’s religious right (though not of the isolationist far-right) saw their country’s missile attack as a noble act by Donald Trump: a sign of his virtuousness compared with the wicked sloppiness of his predecessor.

I see media reports of a “US-led coalition”, but I seem to have missed the formation of this coalition, and its purpose. I know there was a “coalition of the willing” to bring about regime change in Iraq in 2003, and plenty of scorn from people in the US for the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” (the French) who didn’t join it. Someone pointed out that there seems to have been a coalition against ISIS, but the main aim of the current coalition seems to be to put ISIS, or some group very like them, in power in Syria.

The only constant and consistent factor in US intervention in the Middle East has been to establish more anti-Christian regimes, and has led to Christians being killed or driven from their homes in increasing numbers in a form of “religious cleansing” that parallels the ethnic cleansing seen elsewhere. It should therefore not be surprising that Christians in Syria generally take the attitude of “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” Which of the groups seeking to overthrow Assad will treat them better?

But the “Do something” response shows that people outside Syria, including Christians, would behave no better than the people in Syria if they had the chance. It was people who felt they had to “Do something” who attacked the World Trade Center in New York on 9 September 2001. It was people who felt they had to “Do something” that bombed a Metro train in Moscow last week. It was people who felt they had to “Do something” who attacked the offices of a publication in Paris a couple of years ago.

In most of the social media calls to “Do something” about gas attacks in Syria the “something” was unspecified, but I’m pretty sure that in most of them the “something” that the posters had in mind was something violent.

We sometimes read about psychologists and profilers trying to understand the minds of terrorists. But they really don’t have to look far. We are all terrorists at heart, especially when we call on someone to “do something” when that something is violent.

Until we tame that “do something” in ourselves, there is little hope of it being tamed in anyone else.

Lent is over, but we still need to pray, Grant that I may see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother.

 

The war drums beat louder and louder

The media — print, broadcast and social — seem to be filled with war propaganda these days, so much so that other things seem to be getting crowded out.

And I see more and more of my friends being sucked in to it and by it.

In the US election campaign, there seems to be a “more Russophobic than thou” contest, and some have been saying, apparently in all seriousness, that one of the things against Donald Trump as a US presidential candidate is that he isn’t as Russophobic as Hillary Clinton. I can think of plenty of reasons why Donald Trump would not be a good person to be president of the USA, but not being Russophobic enough isn’t one of them. Yet a lot of people do seem to think that is a serious obstacle.

Hillary Clinton has herself declared that her Number One Priority is to remove President Bashir al Assad of Syria. That calls to mind the fulminations of Alfred Lord Milner against President Paul Kruger of the ZAR, at the height of Jingoism in the 1890s. Jingoism seemed to go out of fashion briefly in the 1950s and 1960s, and for a few decades thereafter took the surreptitious form of neocolonialism, but now it is out of the closet with a vengeance.

A few of my friends on social media have been urging me, in all seriousness, to sign petitions calling for “no-fly zones” in Syria. They are people whom I have always regarded as being not without a degree of common sense, but the war drums seem to have driven the common sense right out of their heads. A few years ago a “no-fly zone” was declared over Libya, and the last state of that country is worse than the first.

My question to my friends who think “no-fly zones” are the answer is: why do those calling for a “no-fly zone in Syria not also call for one in Yemen too?

And secondly, who should enforce such a “no-fly zone”? Preferably a neutral party that doesn’t have a dog in that fight, like Uruguay, say, or Botswana. Do you think Russia, or the USA, or France, or the UK, or ISIS or any of the other groups muscling in on the Syrian civil war and the Yemen civil war would pay the slightest attention to even the combined air forces of Uruguay and Botswana?

Bashir al-Assad is not my idea of an admirable ruler, but in the last 20 years or so we have had a lot of propaganda about the need to remove people like Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and those attempts turned out pretty disastrously, because even if they were villains, those who replaced them were worse villains. And still people like Hillary Clinton are promising to apply the same quack remedy to yet another country. It seems to be the policy of “The West” in general to replace secular rulers in the Middle East with militant Islamist groups, one of whose aims is to drive out all Christians and those who don’t adhere to their own peculiar brand of Islam.

Syrian Civil War. Syria – Red. Countries that support Syrian Government, Bluue. Countries that support Syrian rebels – Green.

Russia for a while acted with some restraint in Syria, but is now bombing with as much abandon as the rest of the belligerents, so has come down from the high moral ground and entered pot-and-kettle territory.

Half the countries of Western Europe are bombing and shelling Syria (or supporting those who do), and yet get all uptight when Syrian refugees arrive at their borders trying to get away from their bombs.

And then, as if all this wasn’t enough, along comes this exceptionally nasty piece of war-mongering journalism Queen in row over Putin ally’s visit | News | The Times & The Sunday Times:

The Queen is to host an audience for one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies and a key supporter of Russia’s actions in Syria, prompting protests from MPs.

The royal reception is for Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox church, who arrives for his first UK visit next Saturday. MPs and a former senior government adviser have called it a “propaganda” trip from a churchman who has described Putin’s presidency as a “miracle of God”.

In July Kirill, 69, an alleged former KGB agent, also described Russia’s operations in Syria as “noble and honest”. Last month Britain’s UN representative accused…

Not that this is not one of those fake news sits. It’s not even The Sun. This is The Times, part of the “mainstream” media, one of the self-styled “quality” papers. And here they are trying to turn the church into a political football, wanting to treat the Patriarch of Moscow as badly, if not worse than President Zuma and the South African government treated the Dalai Lama.

What they don’t mention (but I learned from a priest who receuived an invitation to the event) is that the Patriarch was going to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian Church in London. The article seems calculated to stir up hatred against the church. I think there are laws in Britain against “hate speech”, and wonder if this kind or article is perhaps in breach of such laws. But whether or not that is the case, ity does seem that it is being used to beat the war drums louder.

My concern in all this is that people seem to be increasingly sucked into to war propaganda, and to swallow it quite uncritically. I’m not a fundi on Mioddle Eastern affairs, and I’ve never been to Syria, but in my no-doubt over simplifiend and even simplistic understanding, one thing stands out: the Western media, the Russian media and the Middle Eastern media all have vested interests in the conflict, and everything they say needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, and if possible verified independently.

But it seems to be that there are two main scenarios, and perhaps both are operating at the same time.

1. There is a Sunni Shia conflict
2. There is a conflict over gas and petroleum products.

President Bashir al Assad of Syria has the support of Shia groups in Syria, and those who support him, both locally and internationally, are either supporting Shia interests, or are perceived by otghers as doing so. These include such groups as Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The West, Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf states support Sunni Islam, and and so the conflict can be described, simplistically, as a Sunni-Shia conflict, with the West o9n  the Sunni side and Russia on the Shia side, and if the conflict keeps escalating there is a danger that it could end up as World War 3.

Tjhere are also economic interests involved, especially as they relate to gas pipelines between the Middle East and Europe, which pass, or are planned to pass, through Syria. Those opposed to Bashir al Assad may have mixed motives, but among them could be that he leans towards Shia and he may oppose their favourite pipeline project. And those who prop him up may have motives that include his support for their pipeline project, and oppiosition to rival projects that may threaten theirs. For more on this, see here: Syrian war explainer: Is it all about a gas pipeline?. And no, I din’t believe it’s all about the pipelines, but I do believe that some of it may be. Take this article with just as big a pinch of salt as any other.

And as a reminder, here’s a kind of timeline of the conflict: Syria: The story of the conflict – BBC News:

More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other – as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State.

And it too needs to be filtered for bias.

The War on Christmas

The modern War on Christmas began when Ariel Sharon, then the Prime Minister of Israel, provocatively went for a walk on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in September 2000. thereby sparking off the Second Intifada. This turned Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, into a no-go area, just in time for the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ, which Christians might have wanted to observe with special celebrations.

The song of the angels, heard by the shepherds, was more than a little ironic:

Luke 2:14  Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

King Herod, who started the first War on Christmas, apparently showed very little goodwill, and over the last 200 years, little has changed.

Global Research is a somewhat tendentious web site, and I usually take what it says with a pinch of salt, but when it comes to the War on Christmas, I think they got it right. US-NATO’s “Counter-Christmas Crusade” against the Cradle of Civilization and the Holy Land | Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization:

…a region now decimated by that created by George W. Bush’s and Tony Blair’s “Crusade,” not to mention Obama and Cameron’s “humanitarian bombings” of the Land of two Rivers.

Ur was vandalized by the US army, who arrived with Bibles in vast stocks, missionaries and plans for proselytizing those who had nurtured and stewarded the region’s wonders of all religions for centuries.

Al-Qurna was stormed and devastatingly damaged by British, Lithuanian and Danish troops, the Tree of Knowledge whose legend and life seemingly spanned the mists of time, died, near certainly from the poisonous pollution of battle, more poisonous even than that which destroyed over half all fauna and flora after the Desert Storm 1991 onslaught, leaving the soil dead and infertile for years afterwards.

Syria’s tragedy in the ongoing Crusade, determination to redraw the map of the Middle East and steal all natural resources rather than purchase them, is outside the scope of this article.

And Christmas is not the only Christian activity that has been disrupted by these Middle Eastern wars. Now there is this: Last-minute politics overshadow historic pan-Orthodox council – The Washington Post:

A religious summit last held more than 1,200 years ago suddenly risks being downgraded or postponed because of Syria’s four-year civil war. This unexpected twist has come as the world’s Orthodox churches, the second-largest ecclesial family in Christianity, were supposed to be only months away from their first major council since 787.

Now it is no longer clear when or where the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, a summit first proposed at least as far back as 1961 and provisionally scheduled for May in Istanbul, will be held.

Merry Xmas, everyone!

Geopolitics in a nutshell

I think this graphic is one of the best and most succinct summaries of current world politics that I’ve ever seen.

Of course this is nothing new. As Billy Joel sings:

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world was turning

But stupid is as stupid does.

Been through this movie before?

I’ve just “shared” three appeals for peace on Facebook — one from a Christian, one from a Muslim, one from a Jew.

People say that “religion” is responsible for most of the violent conflict in the world, so how come it is the secular politicians who are fanning the flames of conflict in the world, while is is the “religious” people who are calling for peace?

Remember what happened 100 years ago tomorrow?

I’ve just been reading about it in this book, an hour by hour account of that day, with what led up to it, and the aftermath. Come tomorrow, when I’ve finished the book, I’ll review it (now finished, review here)  but what disturbs me is that nothing has changed. While the world media’s spotlight is on Gaza this week, they haven’t stopped killing people in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine. Three civil wars and a quasi civil war in Gaza.

But what are the world’s politicians doing about it? Are they trying to urge the warring parties to get together and try to find a peaceful solution? No, they are grandstanding and making threats against each other, just as they did a century ago. Back then it was called jingoism, and it’s much the same to day.

We don’t want to fight
But By Jingo! if we do
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the guns
we’ve got the money too.

What can ordinary people do to promote peace when the politicians of the world’s most powerful nations are in the driving seat and driving in top gear to hell?

For what it’s worth, here are some of the appeals for peace:

• A Plea for Peace in Gaza from an Orthodox Christian in Palestine – News | Orthodoxy Cognate PAGE
• Henry Siegman, Leading Voice of U.S. Jewry, on Gaza: “A Slaughter of Innocents” | Democracy Now!
• ▶ World’s top Muslim leaders condemn attacks on Iraqi Christians – YouTube

But what is happening?

With Syria buried in the news, hopes fade for ending world’s bloodiest war | Al Jazeera America

What are other countries doing? Supplying arms to the combatants, that’s what.

Church leaders express concern about the sabre-rattling rhetoric: Statement by the diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in Australia regarding the situation in Ukraine:

The Church is concerned that much of the rhetoric appearing in the media is biased and ill-informed; based upon the geo-political aspirations of certain stakeholders, which can only lead to further conflict and, God forbid, outright war.

And even some retired politicians recognise the danger — Ex-chancellor Schmidt slams EU over Ukraine – The Local:

Former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt said on Friday the Ukraine standoff recalls the lead-up to World War I and blamed the “megalomania” of EU bureaucrats for sparking the crisis.

For the moment, these are separate conflicts, but remember that the Second World War started when a lot of separate smaller conflicts coalesced into one big one — Italy versus Ethiopia, Japan versus China, Germany versus Poland. And suddenly it became a free-for-all.

Can we learn the lessons of history, before it’s too late?

 

 

 

Call for contributions: Synchroblog on Syrian civil war

A group of Christian bloggers are planning to have a synchroblog on the Syrian civil war and responses to it on Tuesday 17 September 2013. We invite others to join us in blogging on this topic on that day.

A synchroblog is when a group of bloggers decide to post articles on the same topic at about the same time, with links to each other’s posts, so that you can surf through the posts and get a variety of views on the topic. If you would like to see some past examples to see how it works, you can have a look at this synchroblog on Christian reponses to Halloween, or this one on Spiritual warfare or this one on Altered states of consciousness. Some of the links on some of the older ones may not work, because people sometimes close their blogs or move them, but it should be enough to give you an idea of what a synchroblog is and how it works.

Saint Thecla (Mar Takla) monastery in the ancient Christian village of Ma’loula, Syria. This is a 1600 year old Orthodox Monastery home to 13 nuns and 27 orphan. It is also the oldest womens’ monastery in the world in one of the last villages to speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Christ. St. Thecla Monastery is being attacked by Al Qaeda rebels of the “Free Syrian Army”

The Syrian civil war has been going on for more than two years now. It started as protests against the authoritarian dictatorship of Bashar al Assad, which were brutally suppressed, and some of the protesters responded with counter violence. Since then people from other countries have joined in, not all of them with the interests of the Syrian people at heart. There are now various rebel groups with different interests, and some of them have attacked Christian churches and monasteries, and thousands of people have fled from their homes because of the fighting.

Now there is a threat of greater international involvement, as the US government wants to attack the government of Bashar al Assad over its alleged use of poison gas. There is a great deal of ignorance about Syrian Christianity in the USA, the country which wants to bomb Syria. Many Americans seem to believe that Syrian Christians are not Christian at all because they speak Arabic and address God as “Allah”.

There are many aspectsw of the conflict, and so many different ways of blogging about it. It would be good is some Syrian Christians could also join in the synchroblog. But because of the threat of the conflict expanding into an international one, we hope that many Christians from many different places will join in. Your blog post can focus on any aspects of it that concern you, from the heritage of Syrian Christians to the fate of refugees.

How to participate

1. Write your blog post on the Syrian conflict and post it on Tuesday 17 September. I suggest that those in East Asia, Australia and New Zealand post it in the evening, those in west Asia, Europe and Africa post it at midday, and those in America (north & south) post it in the morning.
2. As soon as you have posted, send information about the title & url of your post to me at shayes@dunelm.org.uk using the form below. I will compile a list of the posts as I receive them, and post the links on my contribution, and will also send them to other participants.
3. Post the list of links at the end of your synchroblog post, so that when others have finished reading it, they can go on to one of the others.

Format for reporting your post

As soon as you have posted your contribution, copy the URL for your post from your browser and send it to me in an e-mail message in the following format

NA Poster’s name
BL Poster’s blog name
TI Title of your post
URL Url of your post
REL Your religious background
EM Your e-mail address

If you use that format — with the preceding tags in capital letters followed by a single space (resist any temptation to add colons!), and each piece of information on a separate line (it can word-wrap), I will be able to import it straight into a database without re-typing, and produce a report with the HTML code for the links which can then be appended to your post. I will post them on my contribution, and the easiest thing will be to copy and paste them from there. But I will also send it by e-mail to all the registered contributors (to the e-mail address you provide, so don’t munge it).

If you send it to me by e-mail at

shayes (at) dunelm.org.uk

Do the media live in a different world?

Last week we saw the media wittering on about the UK parliament’s “No” to David Cameron’s plan to bomb Syria as a “humiliation” for Cameron.

That was the big story.

Not that people in Syria were going to be spared having yet another group of people bombing them. Not that it was diminishing the possibility of a civil war spreading to become an international one. No, the big story was that the media thought that one man was being “humiliated”.

And now they are doing it again.

BBC News – Syria crisis: Obama’s gamble on Congress:

The draft resolution from the White House calls for authorisation for action to “deter, disrupt, prevent and degrade” Syria’s ability to use chemical weapons: two senators – one Republican, one Democrat – called that too open-ended.

Republican Senator John McCain, who has been leading the demand for military intervention in Syria, said that there was “no strategy, no plan” – and both were needed before he’d back the motion.

If Congress doesn’t back him, it will be disastrous for the president.

His decision to call for a vote will look foolish and he would be left with an appalling choice.

Ignore the vote and enrage Congress and many Americans. Or don’t strike and live with John Kerry’s words that America will be weakened, petty dictators emboldened and history’s judgement harsh on America’s leaders.

It looks as though the media pundits identify themselves with “history”, assuming that “history’s” judgements will coincide with theirs.

Will President Obama also be “humiliated” if he does the right thing, and refers the matter to the US Congress, and the US Congress does the right thing, and doesn’t agree to fan the flames of war?

Perhaps in the eyes of the media, but I think it would allow him a face-saving out.

He wouldn’t have to back down and say he was wrong. He wouldn’t have to appear to be vacillating. He doesn’t have to say anything, but if anyone asks, all he has to say is “I thought we should bomb Syria, but Congress disagreed.”

That means that the blame (and praise) for the decision would belong to the US Congress.

Obama would be off the hook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Jingo! Let’s have another war!

Over the last few days the Western media (well, Sky News anyway) has been banging the war drums, promoting war in Syria.

Has anyone noticed how, since the end of the Cold War, there seem to have been a lot more hot ones? And most of them started, or aggravated, by the Western powers, especially Britain and the United States. usually by intervening in other people’s civil wars.

I think Tony Blair still holds the record as warmonger-in-chief — Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2002, Iraq 2003.

And we are now being subjected to the same barrage of media propaganda that we were subjected to in 1999. An intervention that we were told was necessary to avert a “humanitarian disaster” actually caused a humanitarian disaster far worse than anything they claimed to be averting.

And now we are hearing the same thing about “chemical weapons”. The US is already using chemical weapons in its drone strikes. Most wreapons nowadays reply on explosions caused by chemicals. The only ones that are not chemical are nuclear, and at least no one has used those yet. And the people killed in drone strikes are just as dead as those killed by any other means.

Is there any way of stopping this rush to war, or at least persuading people to stop and think about it before rushing into it?

I suggest there is one.

I suggest that the Liberal Democratic Party of the UK holds the key.

The LibDems are in coalition with the Conservative Party, whose leader, David Cameron, has been beating the war drums loudest. The LibDems and their supporters were the ones who were least enthusiastic about the Afghanistan War of 2002 and the Iraq War of 2003. So perhaps it is time for them to give notice to David Cameron that if he gets Britain involved militarily in the Syrian civil war, they will leave the coalition. Whether they have the guts to do that is another matter, but if they do, it will probably enable them to make a better showing in the next UK election than the oblivion that is likely to be their fate if they stick to the coalition to the end. So perhaps what is needed is for all Brit voters to urge their MPs, and especially all LibDem MPs, to vote against war, and if war is inevitable, to leave the coalition. Start tweeting, folks!

And if Cameron pulls back from the brink, perhaps Obama will think twice.

And then there are reports like this one:

US ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria, blame it on Assad govt’: Report – Yahoo! News India:

The Obama administration gave green signal to a chemical weapons attack plan in Syria that could be blamed on President Bashar al Assad’s regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country, leaked documents have shown.

A new report, that contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence, showed a scheme ‘approved by Washington’.

Perhaps not the most reliable evidence, but the evidence about who the Western governments believe is responsible for the use of “chemical weapons” in Syria seems to be just as tenuous, and relies mainly on innuendo.

And there’s more here: Britain’s Daily Mail: U.S. ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria” | Global Research:

We are reproducing herewith from Archives.org for the record the controversial Daily Mail article pertaining to a US sponsored intelligence operation to launch a chemical weapons attack on Syria and blame it on President Bashar al-Assad.

From the outset, the underlying objective was to provide a justification, on “humanitarian grounds”, for a military intervention directed against Syria.

Western Media-Appointed Good Guys Strike Again

In the civil war going on in Syria, the Western media have appointed the rebels against the Assad regime as the good guys, and woe to those who disagree with their judgement. Among those who disagree are probably most of the Christians in Syria, who fear what will happen to them if the rebels take over.

The appointment of the good guys by the western media is not merely a wrong opinion, they seem to have got the facts wrong as well. Western intervention in Libya’s civil war last year did not bring good results, and the same thing seems to be happening in Syria as well.

The Pittsford Perennialist: Western Media-Appointed Good Guys Strike Again:

If you were paying attention you would not be surprised about these “attacks on the people of Tawargha [that] are so severe that the United Nations has labeled them ‘war crimes'” — After Libya’s War, Acts Of Vengeance.

Now, if the official “bad guys” had been accused of this, this “one more fact about the town that was destroyed” would not have been buried at the end of the article: “In this overwhelmingly Arab nation, most of Tawargha’s population was black.” No, if the actors were reversed, that bit would be front and center, and the phrase “ethnic cleansing” would have rightly been used in the headline.

Not that the Assad regime are the good guys. But while it is desirable to get rid of a bad government, it is better to replace it with something better rather than something worse.

As my blogging friend The Pittsford Perennialist also points out

Likewise, news that “the infamous Houla massacre in Syria, which the US and NATO hoped would be the casus belli for their planned invasion, was in fact carried out by rebel forces” should come of no surprise — Implosion of The Houla Massacre Story — Is Anyone Paying Attention?

For the other side of the story, see Syrian Christians fear Islamist rule if Assad goes.

Russian Church Opposes Syrian Intervention – NYTimes.com:

It is clear by now that Russia’s government has dug in against outside intervention in Syria, its longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East. Less well known is the position taken by the Russian Orthodox Church, which fears that Christian minorities, many of them Orthodox, will be swept away by a wave of Islamic fundamentalism unleashed by the Arab Spring.

In his warnings, Patriarch Kirill I invokes Bolshevik persecution still fresh in the Russian imagination, writing of “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country.”

The western media have criticised the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church for their non-interventionist approach, and accuse them of sitting idly by and failing to act to “stop the killing”. But the question is, who is doing the killing?

In Syria, as in Libya, the killing has been, and is being done by both sides. What is needed is not military intervention, but peacemaking intervention.

Good question

What is the difference between what the Syrian army did in Homs and what the U.S. military did in Fallujah? And why?

What Happens in Homs … LewRockwell.com Blog:

What is the difference between what the Syrian army did in Homs and what the U.S. military did in Fallujah? And why?

Hat-tip to The Pittsford Perennialist: The Syria Narrative.

A good question.

And it prompts another:

How loud were the calls from “the international community” for military intervention to stop the US Army doing what it was doing in Fallujah?