And What IS Aleppo?

As aerial footage broadcast by the BBC report shows, much of the ancient city that was once the country’s economic center is now in ruins, four years after fighting started there.

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[T]here is an intense battle for control of the city between government forces supported by Russia and a coalition of Syrian rebel factions supported by the United States that is allied with Islamist groups, including Jabhat Fath al-Sham, al Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria. The Islamic State has no presence in the city, although rebel groups have battled with ISIS in the countryside outside Aleppo.

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This week, the horror of Aleppo’s bombardment was again in the headlines as allegations that government forces had used chemical weapons were followed by more distressing images of child victims.


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The fact that [Libertarian presidential candidate Gary] Johnson had apparently never heard of the strategically important city — and even failed to guess that it was the name of a city (he told Whoopi Goldberg later that he thought it might have been an acronym) — stunned Mike Barnicle, the columnist who asked him what he would do about the situation there if he was elected president.

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As remarkable as that moment was, it was quickly followed by reports on Johnson’s cluelessness that included basic errors about who was fighting in the city and why the tragedy there matters to the rest of the world.

Taken together, those error-strewn reports suggest that American journalists and pundits have become so completely focused on the horse-race aspect of electoral politics that they are paying almost no attention to the biggest foreign policy crisis that will face the next president.

  The Intercept

Now what a surprise that would be.

Asked by MSNBC for his response, [Christopher Hill, a former United States ambassador to Iraq who is now the dean of international studies at the University of Denver] wrongly identified Aleppo as “the capital of ISIS,” apparently confusing it with Raqqa, another city in northern Syria that is held by Islamic State militants.

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The Washington bureau of the New York Times then added to the confusion by rushing to publish a report on the reaction to Johnson’s ignorance that echoed Hill’s error by calling Aleppo “the de facto capital of the Islamic State.”

City identification aside, how does ISIS have a capital? How does an Islamic State exist without any cactual territory? Whether they control a city or a region within Syria or any other country does not qualify, otherwise, any homeowner could claim the land he occupies as a state. I have to think it exists only as a way for the United States and its allies to declare war, since they obviously can't declare war legally on a religion.  And, by agreeing to call it the Islamic State, it is falsely legitimized as a country.  The Jews weren't even afforded that international acknowledgement until Israel was carved out of Palestine for them after WWII.  Seems like if we're going to acknowledge an Islamic State, we should carve them out some land, too.  And, hey, maybe then there wouldn't be any reason to be fighting them.  Oh, wait.  We wouldn't want to go back to having no one to spend our military budget on.  Besides, we'd have to find another country as ill-equipped as Palestine was to object to the loss of territory.

[T]he Times report was first edited to insert a new but still incorrect description of Aleppo as “the Syrian city that is a stronghold of the Islamic State.” That description was later removed, and a correction appended, but the article still includes a mistaken summary of Barnicle’s explanation to Johnson of why Aleppo matters.

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Barnicle told Johnson that Aleppo is “the epicenter of the refugee crisis,” which is correct [but] Barnicle did not, as the Times reports, ask Johnson “how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the war-torn Syrian city.”

Rather than deal with the question of how, exactly, the United States might help to bring this conflict to an end — which it has fueled by supporting rebel groups allied with al Qaeda’s proxy — political reporters covered Johnson’s blank stare as a process story.

It's all about the horse race. We don't care about that little Syrian boy except as the horses asses running the race can use it for propaganda against Bashar Assad.