When the government wants you to cry over something – a very murderous government – you have to look beyond that and think ‘what are they trying to do, what additional killing are they trying to justify’, Lew Rockwell, chairman of the Mises Institute, told RT.

Recent images of a little boy allegedly pulled from rubble after an air strike in Aleppo’s Qaterji district, a rebel-held area, and rushed to an ambulance, where he is seen sitting covered in ash and expressionless, took social media by storm.

RT: Images and videos of the 'Aleppo boy', as he is being called, have made the rounds on social media, generating all sorts of emotions and responses from viewers. What is your take on the images, which really portray the horrors of war?

Lew Rockwell: Well, this sort of thing, of course, is always used as war propaganda. How many children has the United States killed in its wars that nobody except the families, or those who don’t like these wars, cry a tear over? I remember when Madeleine Albright, the [former] Secretary of State when she was asked about a UN report that US sanctions on Iraq had caused 400,000 children to die and she said, “We think it’s worth it.” A very cold-blooded conniver and murderer, Madeleine Albright... So when you look at that child it’s enough reason not to have war. But this is all intended to cause more war, to cause more deaths of the people supporting [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and to just split up Syria and make sure it’s much more easily controlled and support the terrorists who are Al-Nusrah and the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ who are all Al-Qaeda types. That’s who the US wants to bring to power, and we have to remember what they have threatened – although you won’t read this in the US press – they’ve threatened to ethnically cleanse Syria of all the Christians, of all the Shia, of all the Alewites, which is the small sect that many of the people in the government belong to.

These are very nasty people and showing this child reminds me of the huge propaganda over that poor little child that was drowned in Turkey on the way to Europe... and that was supposed to justify destroying the indigenous peoples of Europe with millions and millions and millions of welfare refugees. So it’s important to look behind these things. When the government wants you to cry over something – a very murderous government – you have to look beyond that and think ‘what are they trying to do, what addition killing are they trying to justify’?

His name is Omar Daqneesh and he is 5. Here he is after treatment by some extraordinarily brave doctors in #Aleppo. pic.twitter.com/7WT4oMqExK — Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) August 17, 2016

RT: What is so different about this little boy pictured in the ambulance and the other Syrian children adversely affected by the horrors of war wracking the Arab Republic?

LR: Well, one difference is that this child is still alive, whereas so many of the Syrian children have been killed, and their parents’ lives are ruined… it’s an eternal hurt for these people; it never goes away. Another thing this child helps us remember – although this is not the lesson the US wants us to take away from it – is that civilians are always massively those killed in war. Sometimes it’s actually safer to be a soldier than a civilian. Children, women, old people, man not in the military are far more the victims of war than the soldiers are. So it’s horrible that this child was injured… but [the Western powers should] stop trying to destroy Syria, stop trying to occupy it, stop promoting the terrorists. That would be a help.

RT: Why has public opinion in the West been so critical of Russian military activities in Syria, which granted Moscow the legal right to target terrorists in the country?

LW: Well, they lie. I’m far from an expert on the military aspects of this and of what the Russians are doing. But it seems to me, from my vantage point anyway, that the Russians are in trouble because they’ve targeted Islamic State [in Syria] and because the US doesn’t want ISIS targeted. The US has found ISIS to be a very valuable – and some say certain parts of US intelligence and other foreign intelligence, has even had something to do with generating ISIS, of bringing it to operational status, of arming it, and so forth. So again, this is the way empires work according to the old Roman saying that you have to ‘divide in order to dominate.’

Empires love division; they love civil wars, they love people fighting each other and then the imperial US comes in to fix everything up.