Advocacy Project #1

For my advocacy project, I'm thinking of creating a short video to simplify the Syrian civil war and all the conflicts of interest it creates. The exigence for my advocacy piece would be the recent United States missile strike of a Syrian air base.

My audience would be the American public. I would be advocating for the American public to be more knowledgeable regarding the Syrian civil war. The current American public knowledge of the crisis is that Assad is bad and the Syrian rebels are good. And that Russia is bad for supporting Assad. That's about it. The conflict is way more complicated than that. One of Trump's campaign promises was to defeat ISIS. If President Trump is to defeat ISIS American troops would need to be deployed in Syria - further complicating things. The American people need to know how this would shake up the current conflict and what exactly the American interests are in Syria. The goal of my project would be to show the complexity of the issue concisely - hopefully in less than 2 minutes.

I'm thinking I can use the Gatestone Institute: International Policy Council for the home of this piece. According to the website, The Gatestone Institute promotes:

• Institutions of Democracy and the Rule of Law;
• Human Rights
• A free and strong economy
• A military capable of ensuring peace at home and in the free world
• Energy independence
• Ensuring the public stay informed of threats to our individual liberty, sovereignty and free speech.

One constraint for my PSA will be making sure to address one or more of these tenets. Other important constraints are time, and simplistic word choice - that's not demeaning.