THE ‘ANTI-IMPERIALISM’ OF FOOLS

by Leila Al Shami

Once more the western “anti-war” movement has awoken to mobilize around Syria. This is the third time since 2011. The first was when Obama contemplated striking the Syrian regime’s military capability (but didn’t) following chemical attacks on the Ghouta in 2013, the crossing of a supposed a “red line.” The second time was when Donald Trump ordered a strike which hit an empty regime military base in response to chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. And today, as the US, UK and France take limited military action (targeted strikes on regime military assets and chemical weapons facilities) following a chemical weapons attack in Douma which killed at least 34 people, including many children who were sheltering in basements from bombing.

The first thing to note from the three major mobilizations of the western “anti-war” left is that they have little to do with ending the war. More than half a million Syrians have been killed since 2011. The vast majority of civilian deaths have been through the use of conventional weapons and 94 percent of these victims were killed by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance. There is no outrage or concern feigned for this war, which followed the regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators. There’s no outrage when barrel bombs, chemical weapons and napalm are dropped on democratically self-organized communities, or target hospitals and rescue workers. Civilians are evidently expendable; the military capabilities of a genocidal, fascist regime are not. In fact the slogan “Hands off Syria” really means “Hands off Assad,” and support is often given for Russia’s military intervention. This was evident yesterday at a demonstration organized by Stop the War UK where a number of regime and Russian flags were shamefully on display.

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Syria

Syria: gas attacks, air-strikes and hypocrisy —again

Just over a year after Trump’s air-strikes on an Assad regime airbase in response to a chemical attack, we witness a repeat of this episode—although this time the air-strikes were on wider targets, and carried out in conjunction with British and French forces. In response to last week’s chemical attack on Douma in Syria’s besieged Eastern Ghouta enclave, missiles and warplanes from the USS Donald Cook in the eastern Mediterranean carried out the first Western strikes on targets around the Damascus area. The targets were chemical warfare and military facilities, with no deaths or civilian casualties yet reported. “Anti-war” hypocrites who were silent during Trump’s massive bombardment of civilians in Raqqa and Mosul, silent during the Assad-Purtin destruction of Aleppo, and silent (at best) over the Douma chemical attack, are now protesting air-strikes on Assad’s machinery of death. Such “anti-war” depravity is part of the problem. (Image: Syria Solidarity NYC)