It is fought bitterly, and with no holds barred, the battle against the last stronghold of ISIS. And here too the curse of all the latest wars is repeated: mostly civilians die. Even when “ours are coming”.

The fundamental mechanism of propaganda is binary, unchanged for centuries: talk a lot or stay silent all the time. Talking a lot about other people's "sins" and keeping quiet about your own. A crude but effective mechanism, especially since mass information exists (in order of pervasiveness) newspapers, television and the Internet.

We can see this clearly even now that we are talking about Baghouz, the dark Syrian city along the Euphrates, a few kilometers from the border with Iraq, rose to sudden fame because it was transformed by the jihadists of the Islamic State into the last bastion of their resistance. The Syrian Democratic Forces are moving against Baghouz (Syrian Democratic Forces, Sdf), alliance of Kurdish and Arab units supported politically and militarily by the USA.

When, In the 2014, the jihadist militia made its appearance in Syria and Iraq, founding the Caliphate (but ISIS had already been operating before), More time has passed than it took, at the time, to annihilate Hitler and the formidable war machine of Nazism. And Hitler didn't have a coalition against him 70 Countries like he had instead, at least in theory, l’Isis. It is therefore more than time to put an end to these terrorists who have decided to die rather than surrender. Also because the end now near has not made them better: as ISIS forces retreat, those of the SDF discover mass graves full of corpses of murdered civilians. A, pare, with dozens and dozens of bodies of Yazidi women murdered after being used as slaves.

However, let's pay attention to how this final chapter unfolds. During the day the Kurdish and Arab forces advance with great caution, because ISIS fights with cunning and ruthlessness using snipers, deploying traps (the death of the Italian fighter Lorenzo Orsetti was a dramatic confirmation), placing explosive origins, launching kamikazes. At night everything changes. The Americans use drones and planes and pound the city, where civilians are also starving. Those who managed to escape from Baghouz tell of hundreds of inhabitants used as human shields by terrorists and killed by bombings. It is also suspected that some of the mass graves contain, precisely, the bodies of those who died under the bombs.

But, and let's return to the topic of propaganda, no one talks about it. In perfect line with what we have already seen: Aleppo was a massacre of innocents, medici, rescuers. Raqqa, Mosul in Iraq and now also Baghouz of "normal" military expeditions. The reason is simple: the "bad guys" were operating in Aleppo, Assad's army and the Russians; in other cases the "good", the Americans and the Kurds.

Even if this distinction between “good” and “bad” is valid, a problem remains. A civilian is a civilian, in any city. And a bomb is a bomb, whoever releases it. And compared to this reality, the above propaganda is abhorrent. Not so much because it pushes us to root for this or that, but above all because it tends to hide the reality of contemporary war, which is war “on” civilians. In the First World War, civilian deaths were approximately 16 percent of all deaths. In a time frame similar to that of the conflict 1915-1918, in Iraq, after the Anglo-American invasion, the civilian deaths were the 90 percent of the total. Even in the Syrian war, the deaths without uniform were much more numerous than those in uniform. In contemporary warfare, the “collateral victims” are the military. Awareness of this fact, which makes the armed conflict even more unacceptable, it must always be valid. A Baghouz comes to Aleppo, a Fallujah come a Gaza, in Afrin as in Raqqa or Yemen. Like everywhere.

source – http://www.centrostudifederici.org/larma-della-propaganda-di-guerra/