Kevin Drum is upset about the news that the UAE manufactured the inflammatory quotes that caused Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations to blockade Qatar. Specifically:
This seems to be getting almost no attention today. Why? Do people not believe it? Does news about Qatar just not matter? Am I overestimating how big a deal this is?
This is a deliberate and calculated false-flag operation, designed specifically to create a fake casus belli. Isn’t that a massively big deal?
The how, yes, but the what, no. Wars are often ginned up using deception, such as the recent Iraq War as well as World War II. Add in that it’s half a world away, and mix in American provincialism, and it’s no surprise. It’s sad, and the UAE should be punished in some way, but the skullduggery of ambitious political leaders is as old as the hills.
Show us something new, eh?
All that said, the story is important as an illustrative example of what can happen when the Internet is overly trusted. In a sense, this is an attack on the Internet, because the less we can trust the medium, the less useful it becomes. But now we see international tensions rise because of ambition and opportunity. Is the American citizenry smart enough to understand that can happen to them as well?
