Images are a powerful tool in the hands of propagandists. A picture is worth
a thousand words, as the saying goes. If a powerful image can be manipulated
to tell a tale even if false, it can persuade more viscerally than can a thousand
reasoned arguments.
So it is with the tragic photograph making the mainstream media rounds yesterday
of a lone Syrian child drowned on a Turkish shore. Reams of articles can be written
about the current refugee crisis but particularly in the US they will go relatively
unnoticed by those not directly affected. There may be some video clips on the
nightly news but overall the story — and particularly the context — will go
unexplained.
But the powerful image of a dead child, abandoned by the world on the capricious
sway of the tide, is putty in the hands of propagandists.
And proponents of the four-year US policy of Syrian destabilization and regime
change are lining up to make their case that the current refuge crisis — now
swamping Europe with Syrians desperate for something approaching a normal life
— is one hundred percent the fault of both Syrian president Assad and the western
non-interventionists who objected to plans in 2013 for the US and UK to begin
bombing Syria.