Tensions over Ukraine—essentially over how much of Eastern Europe will be dominated by the U.S. and its allies vs. Russia—continue (see coverage at revcom.us). As the conflict escalates, the Washington Post has been channeling accusations from the Biden administration that “Moscow is considering filming a fake attack against Russian territory or Russian-speaking people by Ukrainian forces as a pretext to invade its neighbor.” The Post article details alleged plots by Russia to stage an invasion on false pretenses.

Maybe the editors of the Post lack the resources to do a Google search into the long litany of U.S. invasions staged on false pretenses. But if they had the resources to do so, they could learn that their colleagues at the New York Times repeatedly channeled claims by “an inside White House source” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, lies that could have been easily exposed and refuted, but were aimed at aligning the liberal readership of the Times behind, or at least being confused about, a totally unjustified war launched by the U.S. that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and fanned the flames of the clash between Western imperialism and reactionary Islamic jihad.

Or, the editors of the Post might have looked up how the U.S. lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate a war on Indochina that killed millions of people. Or fabricated accusations that Iraq was killing babies in incubators to attack Iraq.

Or, if they had the resources, the editors of the Post could look up some basic U.S. history, including how the U.S. seized on the sinking of the battleship Maine (which the U.S. initially ruled an accident) to rally public opinion to go to war with Spain to seize Cuba and turn it into a hellish sugar plantation (see American Crime Case #59: The U.S. Invasion, Occupation, Domination, and Plunder of Cuba: 1898 to 1959).

If resources are the problem, one solution might be a crowd-funding site to raise money for the Post (owned by the owner of amazon.com) for resources to look up basic facts of American history.

Or, maybe the problem isn’t that the Washington Post doesn’t have the resources to look these incidents up. Maybe the problem is that the mainstream media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, are propaganda organs for this system, institutions that are part of and serve a ruling class that systematically obscures the real reasons behind its wars for empire: that these crimes are built into the operation of a system of global exploitation and oppression, engaged in do-or-die conflict with rival oppressors that periodically break out in horrific wars. And that this system needs to be overthrown.

It’s one or the other. Which problem do you think is behind the Post channeling lies to justify U.S. war crimes? And which solution do you think is needed?