Mitchell McGuire

Reflection
My targeted audience is the American population. I chose the entire American population
to be the demographic I am attempting to reach through my genres because the issue I am talking
about not only affects every American citizen, but more importantly, every American citizen has
the potential to affect and influence the issue of Americas foreign policy in Syria. I am trying to
convey to the American people the fact that the agenda to remove Al-Assad from power has
subsided for now, but will resurface in the near future, and when it does, they need to push back
against it and reject it unless they want American soldiers to die and kill for an oil pipeline that
will benefit the oil corporations and oil kingdoms such as Saudi-Arabia while betraying
Americas fundamental ideologies and values of democracy and freedom. Syrias democratic
government under President Assad is more progressive than any other country in the middle
east; while Saudi Arabia demands every citizen lives under an oppressive Sharia law, Syria is a
secular state which does not discriminate between Sunnis, Shias, Christians, or Jews(or any
other religious demographic). In fact, Al-Assad is a Shia Muslim who is married to a Sunni wife.
If the reader of this fact understands the history between Sunnis and Shia, and the current
tensions between the two groups, theyd realize how big of a statement this fact makes. My
ultimate point is that the demands to remove Assad are allegedly motivated by human rights
concerns, but they are actually motivated by his refusal to allow a pipeline proposed by Qatar to
run through his country. The pipeline would serve to benefit the oil kingdoms of Qatar and Saudi
Arabia as well as American oil companies and Western European nations in terms of oil prices
due to the pipeline reducing the need to transport oil overseas. This is why the CIA had been
funding moderate rebels(Al-Qaeda and other extremist Jihadis who hate secular democracy)
since 2006, before the Arab spring or any of the chemical weapons incidents blamed on Assad.
One of the best sources I found was a personal essay by Robert F. Kennedy, son of
assassinated senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of assassinated president, John F. Kennedy.
His perspective of the entire situation essentially echoes my own. He explains the issue
concisely, yet thoroughly, in just 4 pages. One of my favorite quotes from the article(pg 2) is as
follows -
Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate
that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly
arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative
Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the
Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the
Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria. It is important to note that
this was well before the Arab Spring-engendered uprising against Assad.
This quote was stated after Kennedy introduced the notion that Assad further enraged the Gulfs
Sunni monarchs (on top of rejecting the Qatar pipeline) by endorsing the Islamic pipeline
proposed by Iran and advocated for by Russia which would derail the Gulf states dominance of
the regions oil market and dramatically increase the influence of Iran and Syria as well as
enrichen both countries. I highly encourage any American to read Why the Arabs dont want us
in Syria by RFK Jr. It is a quick read, and well worth it. He cites a DOD document in his essay
that I also cited in the earlier part of my research before stumbling across his document.
The document was released by the freedom of information act, and was written and
signed off by the DOD and state department in 2012. The 7 page report starts off by
acknowledging the fact that The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI(Al-Qaeda in Iraq)
are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. Why would the pentagon want to support
this group of Islamic Extremists? RFK JR. stated in his essay that, The report paints the Syrian
conflict as a global war for control of the regions resources with the west, Gulf countries and
Turkey supporting [Assads] opposition, while Russia, China and Iran support the regime The
document referred to this dynamic as a proxy war, and proxy wars dont happen over human
rights violations. They happen over resources and geo-political control. The most important take-
away from the document is that it predicts the rise of ISIS and portrays it as part of Americas
agenda, claiming If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or
undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor) and this is exactly what
the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime. This
document shows that the pentagon and DOD were knowingly funding Jihadi extremists for
years in order to isolate weaken Assads government so that he could be removed from power to
make way for a Syrian government that would be more economically cooperative with the
western countries oil ambitions, even if that meant destroying a sovereign democracy, creating
more terrorists, and supporting the very ideologies(Sunni Wahhabism) that were responsible for
9/11. (DOD, 2012)
My last source to be acknowledged is a Washington Times article titled, Syrian rebels
used Sarin nerve gas, not Assads regime: U.N. official which detailed how Testimony from
victims strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin nerve gas
during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior U.N. diplomat said Monday.
The article went on to report how Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent
International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, claimed in an interview to Swiss TV that there
were strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof, that rebels intent on
removing the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, had used the nerve agent. (Washington Times,
2013)
This is vitally important, for before that announcement, every media outlet was pointing fingers
at Assad and claiming he had crossed Obamas red line of using chemical weapons after being
told not to. While he had no motive to do so, the rebels were happy to give him credit for using
the weapons as that garnered support from the international community to remove Assad, which
would create a power vacuum that rebels hoped to fill. Proof or not (the reality is not), Assad is
being blamed for every chemical weapon attack before evidence is even made available.
For my genres, I chose a tweet and a dialogue. Twitter is an excellent medium to reach
the overall American public. Trump uses twitter to communicate to Americans for a reasonits
a direct line of communication to millions of Americans. I chose a dialogue because many
Americans are influenced by political discussions with their peers. An informative dialogue can
change someones stance on an issue more than any singular news article. Tweets on the issue
can be found on my wall, or anybodys wall where someone they follow retweets it. Dialogue
would be found in person, where a political conversation is engaged. The order of exposure to
the genres is not very important, but I would advise for the dialogue to be introduced before the
tweet, as the dialogue is engaging and would make someone more inquisitive so as to where they
actually read the link to the essay by RFK JR, which I believe is almost a guaranteed influence
on anyone that takes the time to read it.
My main mode of communications was linguistic, for that is really the only way to
communicate the state of affairs. I used visual communication in the meme of Assad, which is
effective in getting people to click on the image and read it. People like reading words over
pictures rather than words by themselves. I believe I employed the spatial mode of
communications when using the meme in the dialogue, which would be me pulling that meme
out during the dialogue to make my point on motivation. I appealed to my audiance using logos
by analyzing Assads motivation for using chemical weapons(or lack of), analyzing the western
governments motivations for blaming Assad for chemical weapon attacks in order to garner
support for his removal, and analyzing the motivations of moderate jihadi extremist rebels in
using sarin gas and blaming Assad for such incidents. I employed Aristotles appeal of ethos
when using the RFK JR, a prominent political figure in the public spotlight, as a proxy for my
own opinion. Considering his perspective aligns with my own almost 100%, his essay is a good
medium to establish the validity of my opinion, for he is a well-respected and credited public
figure whos family has been more involved in American politics than almost any other. Pathos
can be observed in my argument where I ask if Americans are ready to spend their tax dollars
and spill their own blood in order to benefit the foreign oil kingdoms and domestic oil
companies. Pathos is also seen where I point out that Saudi Arabias human rights record is
much more troubling than Syrias. RFK JR. agrees with me, stating that , According to Hersh,
He certainly wasnt beheading people every Wednesday like the Saudis do in Mecca. Before
quoting another veteran journalist named Bob Parry, who says No one in the region has
clean hands, but in the realms of torture, mass killings, [suppressing] civil liberties and
supporting terrorism, Assad is much better than the Saudis. Within the same paragraph,
Kennedy later acknowledges the fact that WikiLeak cables indicate that the CIA was already on
the ground in Syria by the time the Arab Spring protests began in Syria, including the statement
that No one believed that the regime was vulnerable to the anarchy that had riven Egypt, Libya,
Yemen and Tunisia.
I believe now is the time for Americans to educate themselves on the issue, especially
considering Saudi Arabia kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon yesterday. Lebanon is as
strategic as Syria at this point in terms of blocking Irans proposed pipeline that would run
through Syria, to ports in Lebanon. The Saudis figure that if Qatar isnt able to build their
pipeline, they will at least prevent Iran from getting theirs. This is how a proxy war develops into
a full-scale international conflict(war). In the end, my genres will be effective for those who give
them the time of day, but most will not. If I had more time, I would have made my genres better
by creating a twitter page dedicated to the topic rather than a few tweets. I also would have
created a dialogue that asked more questions than it made assertions if I was not dealing with a
general public that is generally apathetic to issues that dont affect that them until it affects them.
If I had more time I would have had an alternative version of the debate carried over SMS or
social media where a person informed himself throughout the conversation and was able to
research in between responses as to have the most productive dialogue.
References
Defense department. R 050839Z AUG 12. Signed off on it by State Department, Judicial
Watch, Aug. 2012, retrieved from www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-
Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf.
KENNEDY, J. R., Wofford, B., Starr, P., Shafer, J., Taft, I., Wilkinson, W., & Metzl, J. M.
(2016, February 22). Why the Arabs Dont Want Us in Syria. Retrieved from
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/rfk-jr-why-arabs-dont-trust-america-21360
Waterman, S. (2013). Syrian rebels used Sarin nerve gas, not Assads regime: U.N. official.
Retrieved from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/syrian-rebels-used-sarin-
nerve-gas-not-assads-regi/