Kucinich has made six trips to Syria over the last decade and asserts that mainstream US news outlets often omit elements in their reporting on the country.
"There’s not a civil war happening in Syria." she said on By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), "There may have been small uprisings at the beginning, but that has totally been infiltrated now by extremist groups, and much of the country has been taken over by them, and, sadly, our country and others are supporting them."
She added that the ongoing Western narrative purporting nonstop tribal warfare in Syria is also false, explaining that, "Syria is being destroyed systematically city by city, town by town, dismantled quite literally. [There are] thousands of factories that have been dismantled, the pieces and parts being sold off and transported across the border into Turkey, and goodness knows where they’ve gone. So, this is not about a democracy movement, this is really about the installation of something far more sinister."
Kucinich also noted that Western reporters in Syria are often stationed in posh hotels in areas at a safe distance from the conflict, while receiving a news feed from outside of the country’s borders. She added that often news outlets will seek information from sources to suit their editorial bias, causing misinformation, and often outright fabrication, designed to support extremist groups allied with their views.
BAMN host Eugene Puryear pointed out how ongoing violence in Syria has been a "polarizing issue for the US anti-war movement," asking, "Could this be a lever to start talking more about foreign policy issues in the progressive movement?"
Kucinich suggested that she believes it is possible, but said that the US must abandon its pretence of noble intentions when intervening in conflicts abroad, when Washington’s involvement is, in truth, for the US national interest.
"What the establishment in Washington is really being clever in doing, is taking the policy of a responsibility to protect citizens and civilians, and use that as a cover for going into war,"she said, offering Libya as an example of when the US helps to depose a leader, and then unorganized militant groups come in and fill that leadership void.
She pointed out how the recent election of US President Donald Trump has caused the kind of division in the US that Kucinich says is prevented from happening in Syria by national pride and genuine unity, suggesting that a turn away from power dynamics and toward reconciliation is the best way forward.
"There’s a question of where is one’s allegiance, is it to the party, or is it to the country? It has to be with the country, it can’t be about power politics, it’s got to be about what’s best for America, and what’s best for America is when we come together and try to make common sense decisions, and we try to move the country toward a vision, instead of trying to destroy one another over who is, and isn’t, in control."
