Friday 23 May 2014

Russia blocks ICC action on Syria, heightening 'anti-war' contradiction

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'The "anti-war" left is simply getting everything backwards this time—essentially serving as the propaganda arm of a fascistic one-family regime that continues even now to use chemical weapons against its own people.
While ultimately, I suppose I share Anderson's position of supporting the Syrian revolution while opposing US military intervention, I can't merely state "Against US attacks!" and "Against the Assad regime!" (with exclamation points), as if there were no contradiction there. The Syrian left-opposition groups that oppose Western intervention, like the Revolutionary Left Current, are now a fairly marginal force within the civil resistance movement—which has itself been significantly sidelined by the armed insurgent groups. And the notion that anti-imperialist principles mean we must oppose even intervention against a genocidal regime strikes me as hardly less problematic than supporting intervention. I see this as a genuine moral dilemma. But I'm clear on this: We, as "anti-war" voices in the West must put solidarity with the Syrian revolution front and center—not opposing purely hypothetical military adventures (as opposed to Assad's extremely real ones), or imaginary "destabilization" campaigns.'

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