An Inconvenient Truth

I am in solidarity with the Syrian people.” “I reject the brutality and killing that the Syrian authorities are committing against the Syrian people.

So, announced twenty two year old Kayla Mueller in a You Tube video of October 2, 2011. Unfortunately, for Kayla, she shared a view of Syria which was as myopic and ill-informed as that of her government. If her government had been honest with Kayla and the rest of the American public, it would have informed her that two years into Syria’s bloody war, the Syrian government of President Bashar Al Assad enjoyed the support of at least 75% of Syria’s 23 million people. However, Obama, Clinton, Rice and Kerry were too busy pushing the false narrative which inspired young idealists like Kayla to let her know what even the CIA knew to be the truth about Assad and Syria.

Kayla spent time in southern Turkey (the base for foreign Jihadist fighters and weapons entering Syria) before illegally slipping across the border into Syria to join up with those she was convinced were the victims of Syrian government persecution. Kayla took up residence in a sector of Aleppo controlled by the terrorists. Fellow Arizonan, John McCain would call them moderates and his friends. Indeed, this was 2012 and ISIS had not been formally announced. Kayla was taken captive in August 2013 while leaving a hospital in Aleppo. Since ISIS did not exist we can only conclude that those who took Kayla by force and held her until her death were the very ‘moderates’ whom Senator McCain pushed us to back. Alternatively, the ‘moderates’ who took Kayla by force later sold her to ISIS as they did with Steven Sotloff. That they later developed the moniker of ISIS is irrelevant to the fate of Kayla Mueller. A Jihadist by any other name…

The MSM cannot escape responsibility for Kayla’s death either. It has gladly served as the Administration’s mouthpiece where Syria is concerned. It fed the public lie after alarming lie to try to provoke Americans into launching war against Syria to overthrow its government. There were too many lies to count. Whether it was Anderson Cooper’s nightly feature with the fraudulent Syrian Danny, BBC’s false claims of babies slaughtered by the Syrian armed forces or their supporters, the lies about a Syrian female activist being kidnapped, tortured to death and mutilated by Syrian government forces, or the two knowingly false claims of Sarin gas use by Syrian armed forces which almost led to direct U.S. military intervention, the MSM was an eager participant in the Administration’s decepetion. One cannot underestimate the extent to which a four year program of concerted propaganda has shaped the views of those like Kayla Mueller and other naïve individuals where Syria was concerned.

America and its allies must also share the blame for Kayla’s fate. The Saudis and Qataris who have fueled Jihadist ideology and funded Jihad in Syria, Turkey and Jordan who have provided bases for Jihadist fighters, and the Americans, British and French who provide training and weapons to those wreaking havoc in Syria. All have Kayla’s blood and the blood of tens of thousands of Syrians on their hands.

Finally, Kayla must take responsibility for her own fate. Entering Syria illegally as an American at a time when the country was immersed in warfare and staking herself firmly in the camp of those at war with the government was a risk even a twenty two year old should have better appreciated.

It was a cruel irony that Kayla Mueller’s death would come at the hands of the very people she thought she was going to protect. In the end, the very government that Kayla was convinced was persecuting its people was trying to save them and her from those Kayla wanted to embrace. Idealism dies hard, but no harder than when reality intrudes.