Anti-Americana: Historical Optimism

 

"Vietnam Will Win! America Will Lose!" reads this Chinese poster, probably from the early 1960s. I'm not 100% sure of this poster's provenance, and would love to know more about it. The illustration shows a crowd of peasants attacking an American soldier; usually the careful compositions of Chinese propaganda art showed a measured balance between civilians, militia, and military. Also, I'm pretty sure the Chinese characters used predate the simplification engineered in the PRC in the 1950s, and there is no use of Pinyin, which seemed to appear on most Chinese posters predating the Cultural Revolution. 

As for the slogan, of course it turned out to be quite accurate. A myth of the invincibility of US imperialism emerged somewhere between the Spanish-American War and World War II, that the US always emerged victorious from war. This myth is largely preserved in popular consciousness, even though it's quite far from the truth.

The U.S. failed to make a decisive victory in its first major post-WWII engagement, Korea. Unable to defeat the North Koreans, who were heavily backed by the Soviet Union and more importantly the new People's China, the best the US could achieve was a military stalemate, easily claimed as a victory by the North. Vietnam ended in the ignominious collapse of a massive American war effort. Cuba brushed off the CIA attack at Giron in 1961. Some minor US engagements, on might call them episodes of bullying, like Grenada and Panama, ended in decisive US victories. However, its two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, while victorious in battlefield terms, probably count as net political defeats. The US seemed to win the cold war, though the resurgence of no-longer-even-claiming-to-be-socialist Russia on the international scene in the last few years makes it clear that that victory might have been only politically solid, leaving a potential military opponent standing.

Surely the US is hungry for a clear military success. Let's hope that proves elusive in Syria... or Iran.

Anti-War Anthems: Has the Bombing Begun?

It's been a couple years, but sadly it's time to break out a new entry in the "Anti-War Anthems" feature here at The Cahokian. Today, it's a video I've seen floating around Facebook. "Has the Bombing Begun?" by David Rovics. I don't know anything about this guy, but this song captures something about this moment: the sad resignation that once again, the world has to go through this, because of the willful evil of people who once claimed better.

Depravity & Hypocrisy Laid Bare: The Meaning of Syria

Crossposted from The Kasama Project:

 Who gassed 1,300 civilians in a suburb of Damascus one Summer morning?

The United States government says it was the government of Bashar al-Assad. The rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, and I heard an estimate this morning that there are as many as a thousand different rebel groups and factions, agree. The Russian government, which backs Assad, says it was done by the rebels, whom it calls terrorists. Others say it was done by Israeli intelligence agents waving the impossible to prove or disprove "false flag" that ends all arguments. Still others say nothing happened at all, a bunch of faked pictures and staged news reports. (A report this morning, as plausible or questionable as any other, claims the gas was Saudi-supplied and accidentally set off by inept rebel mishandling). The United Nations says it is investigating! The United States says it doesn't really care what the UN says, it's too late for facts.

President Obama says the U.S. must respond to what happened with as-yet-undefined military force. As he beats the drum for an attack on Syria, the American people don't seem particularly interested in supporting a new war. And yet, for those voices that are beginning to speak out against the idea of a new war, there seems to be a lot more silence. I think we need to look into what is going on.

If anything is clear in the midst of this muddle (besides the fact that a lot of people seem to be dying), it's that the reputation of the U.S. government for telling anything resembling the truth is completely in the shitter.

President Obama's sudden drive for military retaliation against Assad can't be heard without the reverberation of deafening echoes of the propaganda and disinformation campaign waged by President Bush and his neocon allies in their drive to attack Iraq just over a decade ago. Everyone knows, now, that Bush and his cronies were lying, and most people assume that Obama and his cronies are lying now.



This is a photo of Obama's current secretary of state, John Kerry — then a Senator — and his billionaire wife having an intimate dinner for four with Mr. and Mrs. Assad at a classy Damascus restaurant a couple years ago. Secretary Kerry has just called the alleged chemical weapon attacks "a moral obscenity." He went on to claim, "Our sense of basic humanity is offended."

As happens so often lately, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at this imperialist politician's words.

Basic sense of humanity? Is this the same basic sense of humanity that caused the U.S. to starve untold thousands in a decade-long blockade of Iraq, and when that didn't seem to advance their agenda, to invade that country, unprovoked, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands? The basic sense of humanity that sends drones to assassinate thousands of people on all corners of the globe without trial or evidence, or apparently, even very good aim? Many avert their eyes and ears from the monstrous claims of these politicians, but few actually believe them.

But even as the politicians were crying "But, chemical weapons!," long suspected news was confirmed that the CIA had no problem assisting Saddam Hussein back in the days when he was fighting U.S. Enemy Number One, Iran. Let's quote the headline: "Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran. The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand." That water under the bridge is experiencing a bit of a backflow.

And, speaking of WMDs, chemical weapons and moral obscenities, a little bit of cursory historical research reminds us that it was the U.S. that was the first and only nation to use nukes against civilians. The U.S. blanketed Vietnam with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange, still causing birth defects generations later. The U.S. used depleted uranium weapons in both its wars against Iraq, again leaving a multi-generational legacy of of horrible birth defects. Then there's white phosphorus munitions, shared with its Israeli client state, that turn mere explosives into toxic explosives. Or how about that tear gas used by repressive governments across the Mediterranean, made in U.S.A.? Or closer to home, is not the pepper spray that drenched the Occupy movement a chemical weapon? Indeed let's discuss moral obscenities, shall we?

Occupy Wall Street veteran Mickey Z., in a great article detailing some of the government and media hypocrisy over Syria, wagged, "When I first read about a dictator unleashing chemical warfare upon "his own people," I thought the media was finally discussing how President Obama appointed Michael Taylor (vice president for public policy at Monsanto) to the position of deputy commissioner for Foods at the FDA." Mickey's joke makes a serious point: who the fuck are these people to be lecturing anyone? They don't actually care about people at all: they care about money, votes, power.


This is a picture of U.S. marines walking the streets of Fallujah, Iraq. Fallujah was levelled after its rebellious inhabitants killed and strung up some hired American mercenaries. You'll need a strong stomach to follow up links on what vengeful Americans did to the people of that city. Now, these same masters of outrage say that Assad must be punished for using gas "against his own people." They say they don't want to invade Syria, they don't want to take sides in the civil war, they don't want regime change, they just want to lob a few missiles on the country to teach them a lesson. Would could possibly go wrong?

Remarkably, at least for now, the British parliament just voted down a motion by the Prime Minister to join the U.S. in retaliatory strikes against Syria. (Unsurprisingly for anyone who knows anything about the party obscenely calling itself "socialist" in France, the French President, Socialist Party leader Françoise Hollande has pledged full support to any U.S. attack. France is always eager to remind its former colonies, like Syria, who still wields the stick of imperialism.)

What is less good news is the apparent broad cynicism, apathy or resignation of the U.S. population.
A handful of demonstrations against the threat of a U.S. attack on Syria have already taken place, but they've been small, nothing like the huge demonstrations that met Bush's drive to war. A call went out for local demonstrations at noontime on Saturday, August 31, but I expect these to attract mostly core activists and suspect they will be widely ignored by the media.

The liberal establishment and its media have fallen in lockstop behind the Democratic president Obama. It's a subject for its own discussion elsewhere, but the repulsive liberal vilification of military and NSA whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and heroic journalists like Glenn Greenwald, is a sad spectacle to behold. The New York Times, which shilled endlessly for the Iraq war, losing quite a bit of journalistic prestige and integrity in the process, has already run one grotesque OpEd piece entitled "Bomb Syria, Even If It Is Illegal." Another creepy OpEd piece suggested that the best scenario for the U.S. and Israel (always the first concern of Times journalists) would be an extended civil war that drains the resources of all sides.

Vocal opposition to a strike on Syria seems to be coming more from the right wing of American politics. Republicans and Libertarians, ever eager to condemn Obama for anything at all, have seized the moment. Of course it helps these posers that they're on summer break right now. I would be surprised, in the end, if the U.S. congress doesn't acquiesce to whatever Obama chooses to actually do. He hasn't yet formally asked Congress for authorization, and in any case he refused to do so when "backing" the NATO attack on Libya.



We were treated to the spectacle this week of watching President Obama interrupt his plans against Syria to make a speech lauding the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr on the 50th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington. While plenty of people in attendance remembered that Dr. King was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War, suffice it to say that the liberal politicians speaking from the podium didn't call out this dramatic contradiction. Obama's speech seemed wooden and full of empty platitudes, and even liberals in the African-American community took notice: "Dr. King was a pacifist and anti-militarist who believed that America was the greatest single cause of violence in the world. Barack Obama, while giving his own March on Washington anniversary speech, has already, or soon will, order the United States military to attack Syria....In his soaring rhetoric, Barack Obama chose to return to an old trope, and what is for him, a comfortable narrative. He would speak about his dream of a post-racial America, one that is still a work in progress.....That Barack Obama would decide to lecture and scold Black America on the 50th Anniversary of Dr. King’s speech and the March on Washington is disturbing." (Chauncey De Vega)

In the face of all of this it's not surprising that people feel overwhelmed and anxious. People are worried and concerned about a new war, but disgusted at self-evident hypocrisy and politicians with a long history of lying. That doesn't seem to be enough to coalesce an antiwar movement. The rampant spread of demoralizing conspiracy theories among young people disaffected with liberalism is not helping. Why bother protesting if there is always a hidden hand manipulating reality?

Frankly I think the fact that some remnants of the old anti-war movement have now tied themselves to support for Assad in the Syrian civil war doesn't help, either. The Workers World Party's International Action Center seems to have furnished an antiwar demo I attended in New York with Syrian government flags and portraits of Assad; the PSL's ANSWER coalition seems to take a soft-peddled but similar approach.

There needs to be a real anti-war movement. People should be out in the street, angry and pissed off. It is absolutely incredible that this frayed worn script is being used to rationalize another war. It's outrageous that there are so few strong public voices against it.



As a communist, as an activist in my community, I'm gonna go out on the street with folks I met during the Occupy movement and we're gonna make some noise. I think there will be few of us. I think most people will pass us by. And the depravity of this situation is so horrible, so exhausting, I get that. If we don't look, maybe what's happening a million miles away won't get closer. But I think we should talk for a minute about what we're doing this for: what do we care?

For a hot minute Obama and Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator he eventually helped depose, were buds. In that same rarified world, the Kerrys and Assads can sit down to a gentile dinner or, as shown in another now classic photo, Donald Rumsfield and Saddam Hussein can share a hearty handshake. These photos reveal something profound about the world, the world that communists want to overturn.

It's just not true that for every bad guy there's a good guy. One of the great pieces of wisdom in Marxism is that people do things for material reasons: the world is not turned by a war between good and evil, or by black and white, but by material self interest. The actions of people with different class interests become predictable; and the key to changing the injustices of the world is understanding where the leverage lies, where the sources of power are.

Communists should oppose imperialism, this is absolutely true, and so very important.

The best thing we communists in the U.S. can do for all those who struggle around the world is to do what we can to defeat the monster in whose belly we live. But communists should also support the struggles of the people worldwide for liberation, for self-determination, for freedom. This means that while the Bushes and the Obamas and the Rumsfields and the Kerrys of this world are our enemies, the Qaddafis, the Saddams, the Assads, the Putins of this world, they are not our friends. That is not how the world is divided, not now. These are all, every last one of them, depraved, hypocritical, corrupt, capitalist politicians with a taste for the blood of the people.

Regardless of what the currently unknowable truth is behind the tragedy in that Damascus suburb, Assad and many of the rebel factions have committed easily documentable atrocities against regular people who want nothing more than their own right of self-determination. The western nations falsely posing as humanitarians have a documentable record of even worse atrocity. Communists must point to the horizon and say it doesn't have to be like this. We can win the world for ourselves, for the global majority.

Oh it's an idea not an exact number, but you remember, to coin a phrase, the 99%.
We must sweep away the clutter. Out with the bombs and missiles of imperialism. Out with the duplicitous false parties of capitalist politics. Out with the armies of sectarianism and division. Out with the self-serving, lying murderers who rule the nations of the world. Out with the lying mouthpieces of the mainstream media.

Stopping the war on Syria would be a very good start to making those things happen. Are you with us?

STOP THE ATTACK ON SYRIA!

—by Ish

Stop the U.S. Attack on Syria!

It seems like it's finally about to happen. In the aftermath of an alleged poison gas attack on Syrian civilians, President Obama and his government are finally making noises about directly attacking Syria. There is widespread speculation in the press over so-called surgical cruise missile strikes against Syrian infrastructure and American naval forces in the Mediterranean are already steaming toward Syria. This, despite the fact that there is zero clarity over the nature of the supposed gas incident and what exactly happened and who exactly is responsible. The U.S. has even poo-pooed the fact-finding visit by U.N. weapons inspectors as "too late." It's deja-vu all over again, with flashbacks back to Iraq in the early part of the last decade.

The U.S., the biggest threat to world peace, now sets its sights on Syria. Let it be said: the U.S. cares nothing about the Syrian people suffering in a civil war, it cares only about geopolitical advantage and removing any threats to the State of Israel. The result is predictable: more Syrian people will die. There will be more terrorism and less stability. This is not a "humanitarian" anything, it will be murder, plain and simple, no different than the murders of Syrian people committed by the Assad dictatorship and the U.S./Saudi-backed Islamist rebels. The cruise missiles of the United States are a deadly threat aimed at anyone in the world who doesn't bow down to the brute force of imperialism. The record of American aggression is clear.

The attack must be stopped!

No US Intervention in Syria!

Postcard from North Vietnam, ca. late 1960s

Predictably, and just in time to attempt to redirect national discussion away from all those pesky leaks about government spying, President Obama has announced that in light of his determination that the Syrian government used chemical weapons "against their own people," the U.S. would commence openly arming the opposition Free Syrian Army. Disappointingly for those of us who love a good hack job, no proof of the alleged WMD use was offered, which means no embarrassing pictures were taken of government officials posing in front of hastily doctored and captioned photos. Who says the US government has learned nothing from its mistakes? Anyway, as of this writing there's some dispute about whether the misleadingly-named no-fly zone will be applied to Syrian airspace, since what that actually means is that presumably NATO airforces would have to bomb the crap out of Syria to enforce the grounding of Syrian jets.

I offer up this lovely postcard from Southeast Asia in the 1960s with its brilliantly mocking original caption as a model for what I believe should happen to any US or NATO military airplanes crowding Syrian airspace. Pay attention: the more powerful nation doesn't always win.

The day will come when the Syrian people will kick out brutal rulers like the Assads on their own. But meanwhile, the agenda for those of us in the United States who oppose imperialism is now clear: we must unite to stop US intervention. All you liberals and alleged progressives who united to oppose Bush's attack on Iraq, now is the time to realize that Barack Obama is just as much an enemy of peace and justice as Bush was. It's time to act.

U.S./NATO Hands Off Syria!

Imperialism in a Bell Jar?

I wrote this polemic as part of an ongoing discussion about the attitude of revolutionaries toward imperialism and toward the military conflicts that have arisen out of the "Arab Spring." It's crossposted from Kasama, "A Reply to Pham Binh and Clay Claiborne: Imperialism in a Bell Jar?"  It's a response to an article by Claiborne and Binh on an episode late in World War 2 where the revolutionary anti-colonialists of the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap briefly cooperated with the OSS, the predecessor of the American CIA. I've discussed many of these themes before but they remain central.

Ever since they decided to back US/NATO intervention in Libya (and later to argue for the US to arm or otherwise support the rebel forces in Syria), Clay Claiborne, Pham Binh and other folks associated with the North Star trend like Louis Proyect, have been repeatedly touting this story of US-Viet Minh cooperation. They fall back on this story as though it's some kind of stunning death-ray evidence that annihilates any argument against their position. They argue that it bolsters their case, somehow transforming their support of their own imperialist power into an act of revolutionary internationalism.

There are many problems with the attempt to enlist this historical episode as an argument for their position. Let's dismiss outright Binh's ridiculous assertion that this is just about historical "fact." We all know why he posted this article. But let's tackle a few of the problems with Claiborne and Binh's assertions.

So what actually happened in Vietnam? It's instructive to read Ho Chi Minh's 1952 article "Imperialist Aggressors Can Never Enslave The Heroic Vietnamese People," up on Marxists.org. Unlike the recipients of US armed beneficence in Libya, Ho is absolutely clear what the role of the United States was in Indochina. He rightfully called the American interventionists "masters" of French colonialism: "The U.S. interventionists have nurtured the French aggressors and the Vietnamese puppets, but the Vietnamese people do not let anybody delude and enslave them."
There was a brief historical moment when the strategy of Ho and the Viet Minh was to exploit the contradictions among imperialists. In the declaration of independence that Ho wrote, he says "The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country. We are convinced that the Allied nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam."

But there is simply no comparison, historical or otherwise, between the situation in Indochina in 1945 and North Africa and the Middle East in the 2010s. There is simply no contradiction to exploit. And while I think many debates are possible about the nature of the war between Japan and the US, the US was aiding an actual anti-colonial national liberation struggle, regardless of whether they were ultimately trying to hijack it. Binh has claimed that in Libya the US was aiding a "bourgeois democratic revolution." In the post-colonial age of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, this argument strikes me as dangerously flawed. Perhaps BInh would support waves of NATO airstrikes against the less-than-democratic regimes across Africa? What does he think of the French neocolonialist intervention in Mali?

Who in Libya or Syria today is calling out imperialism for what it is? It's not the people that the US and its close allies are assisting, and that Claiborne and Binh seem to be supporting.
One has only to look as far as Binh's North Star blog to see what the relationship of the pro-NATO Libyan forces is to US imperialism: In "Stage Two of the Libyan Revolution," a "Libyan Rebel" writes, unchecked by any North Star moderator, "Since the killing of Libya’s tyrant and official declaration of liberation, the Libyan people began calling for the next stage in their revolution which is state building....The attack on the U.S. consulate and the passing of the late Chris Stevens was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The act of attacking guests of Libya and the resulting death of a good friend of the Libyan people highlighted the fragility of the state and the danger these militias posed." The article is glowingly illustrated by a picture of Libyans carrying signs like "Sorry People of America" to atone for the attack on the Benghazi spy den.

Back to Vietnam, it's no stretch of the imagination to draw a straight line from US cooperation with the Viet Minh toward the end of WWII to the US relationship with French colonialism and their various puppets in South Vietnam after the war and the eventual defeat of the French, to the apocalyptic war of annihilation waged by the US against the NLF and the North Vietnamese in the 1960s and early 1970s. It would be interesting to know what Ho Chi Minh thought, from the benefit of historical hindsight much later before he died in 1969, whether the aid the Viet Minh received against the Japanese was balanced by the fact it allowed US imperialism a toehold in the independence struggle. Certainly the appeals to American conscience in the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence seem to have quickly given way to condemnations of American meddling.

Which brings us to another problem with Claiborne and Binh's arguments. They argue as though NATO intervention in Libya happened in a bell jar. Or now, that US arming the Free Syrian Army that they advocate would be happening in that same bell jar. Ironically they don't seem to even notice the leap from Libya to Syria. One might think such an attitude was quaintly naive, but neither Claiborne nor Binh are naifs new to the way the world works. Is it an accident that the US/NATO embrace of the Libyan manifestation of the so-called Arab spring corresponded to the US acquiescence of the smashing of Arab spring revolts in the US client state of Bahrain? Is it an accident that in the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, full of the same brutal violence from the sky that NATO and the US displayed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now successfully established a drone base in neighboring Niger? Is there no connection between what imperialism wrought in Iraq and what they're up to now in the rest of the Arab world?

Imperialism was emboldened by its success in Libya. Obama's strategy — which, by the way, should be of great concern to revolutionaries — has been to employ clients and high-tech weapons systems to maximize US military success while minimizing the potential for domestic opposition; this has proved itself invaluable to imperialism's warchest. Regardless of the nature of the Gaddafi regime (in my opinion unmourned), US imperialism achieved a major victory in Libya. And Binh and Claiborne cheered that victory on.

Elsewhere Binh has argued that his call for arming Syrian and Libyan "revolutionaries" doesn't mean he supports U.S. "boots on the ground." But this is meaningless semantics. Everyone knows that the claim the US only facilitated actual military action by NATO members Britain and France in Libya is bullshit. And everyone knows that the claim that the FSA is being armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar but not the US is equally bullshit.

Imperialism is a web of dependent connections, and the destructive, world-dominating force that is US imperialism is the monstrous spider at the center of that web. It's true that the US finds the presence of Salafist and Al-Qaeda-linked forces in the ranks of the Syrian rebels somewhat problematic. It's true that despite the militant rhetoric of the Assads over the years they have proved to be some of the best, non-actually-threatening neighbors the Zionist regime could have asked for, and that therefore the US and its Israeli allies are waiting to see which way the wind blows before making their next commitments. But the partial hesitation of US imperialism to throw its full weight behind the Syrian opposition, or to establish something like a no-fly zone (a thinly veiled declaration of war) shouldn't be seen as some kind of alibi for what Binh and Claiborne are calling for.

Let's get real: Pham BInh and Clay Clayborne are standing right next to the war criminal John McCain in calling for the US to send heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels. The John McCain who, by the way, didn't mind being photographed with sectarian kidnappers in his quick jaunt across the Syrian border.

In my opinion the Assad regime is not something communists have any business supporting. But as the leftish Lebanese resistance movement HIzbollah and some Palestinian factions enter an increasingly polarized conflict on Assad's side, will Binh and Claiborne really be cheering on the shipping of weapons to be used against, say, the PFLP?

What will be the legacy of avowed socialists supporting the military actions of "their own" imperialist power? Karl Liebknecht taught this to us a long time ago: "The main enemy is at home!"  The best way for those of us in imperialist countries to aid the oppressed peoples of the world is to do everything we can to defeat the ruling classes of our own countries. Solidarity that doesn't follow that basic lesson is no solidarity at all: and every failure of leftists like Binh and Claiborne to tell the truth to Libyan or Syrian rebels who might be listening to us further weakens the already damaged reputation of socialism.

It's not like the current conflicts aren't the first time leftists have gone soft on imperialism. In the US wars on Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, segments of the left all abandoned their principle to support the actions of imperialism. It's a timeworn tradition that has happened over and over again when socialists in the homeland of imperialism lose faith in their arguments and doctrines. And the embrace of "state department socialism" is usually also marked by all sorts of other accommodations to capitalism, to imperialism. It marks a shift in roads: is this shift something the fragile and tiny US left can afford?

You wouldn't know it from reading Claiborne and Binh's writings up on North Star, but there are Syrian leftists who recognize the danger from imperialism, while also completely opposing the Assad regime. From the Syrian Leftist Coalition's statement "A Marxist Perspective on Syria: A letter from the Syrian Left Coalition to the Leftists in the Arab Countries" (definitely worth a read in its entirety):

"The media is trying to represent the people’s revolution by the forces of current political “opposition”. This media does not focus on the fighting people, but it considers an “opposition” is combating the regime. This shallow logic reflects a shallow “Marxism” that considers this opposition to represent the people, and thus approaches the revolution through the opposition... No doubt these “opposition” parties should be criticized. Parties that called for an imperialist military intervention, and published an ethnic, fundamentalist speech, in alliance with imperialists and reactionary Arab regimes, should be condemned. These parties are very harmful for the revolution as much as they delay the growth of this mass movement by posing the a speech that frightens the minorities, and also frightens the wide spectrum of people that supports resistance and defiance against imperialism and Zionism...In this situation, a Marxist should be with the people against the regime. At the same time, a Marxist should also fight against this liberal elite “opposition” and against all these fundamentalist forces that threaten a derailing of the revolution into an inter-ethnic and inter-religious struggle, and this is the exact aim the regime was trying to achieve since the beginning of the popular uprising. This can only be achieved first by improving the role of the oppressed masses in this struggle, expressing their demands in a clear program, organize the revolution, and stating a strategy for this revolution in order to overpass its spontaneity into an organized conscious movement.... We should reject any calls for imperialist military intervention, and on this basis also we should reject the intervention of Russia and Iran."

Yes, this is a harder, more difficult position to maintain. The conflict in Syria has taken thousands and thousands of innocent lives. Lives that the United States doesn't actually care about, not one bit. Communists must take the side of the Syrian people, and that means telling some truths that might be unpopular and hard to hear: that intervention of the US into the Syrian civil war, which is already happening, will not free the Syrian people. US weapons come with long strings attached.

So that story about Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Minh, and the American OSS is an interesting historical tale. But as a rationalization for abandoning everything revolutionaries know to be true about imperialism? No thanks. The first gut response of revolutionaries in the U.S should be to bristle with rage against the machinations of our imperialist ruling class.

Vietnam, Libya, Syria, different stories, different times. But the enemy remains the same.

And Syria?

Two years ago the so-called "Arab Spring" burst onto the headlines. Incredibly, authoritarian regimes across the Middle East were dramatically and fundamentally challenged by massive demonstrations and uprisings. From Tunisia to Bahrain to Yemen to Egypt to Libya it looked like the decades-long rule of dictators, mostly propped up by the U.S. and western powers, was coming to an end. Connected to a wave of mass protests across Europe, especially in Greece and Spain, the demonstrations were part of a seemingly unstoppable phenomenon of popular action that even inspired the Occupy movement here in the United States.

But nothing in the real world is simple. Although the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt were overthrown, conservative Islamist movements have stepped into the vacuum of power. The rebellion in Bahrain was crushed with the silent acquiesence of the U.S. A quick rearrangement of the chessboard stalled the struggle in Yemen, and in Libya, the uprising turned into a civil war and the lethal intervention of American and European imperialism via NATO bombing changed everything. Lower levels of civil unrest have spread to Jordan, the Palestine Authority, Iraq and even Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco. If there is a sense of something new still happening in the world, there is no longer certainty that a victory for "the people" is inevitable. Which brings us to Syria.

Shortly after the demonstrations moved to Syria, the authoritarian government of Bashar al-Assad showed it had little tolerance for dissent, and moved to brutally stifle any opposition. Like in Libya, protests and uprisings quickly turned into civil war. Some have recently estimated that civil war has cost 60,000 lives. The regime has been undeniably brutal, killing civilians, punishing towns and cities with destruction for showing opposition, all the while denying the existence of a civil war and blaming everything on "gangs of terrorists." The opposition, much of it seemingly organized on sectarian lines and whole wings of it deeply influenced by militant Islamists, has given the Assad regime a serious military run for its money, holding on to towns and territory and border crossings with rebel-friendly Turkey. But the opposition has been accused, truthfully as near as I can tell, of itself committing anti-civilian massacres and acts of wanton destruction. 

I will not pretend to be any kind of expert on the Syrian situation, and I have refrained from posting here on Syria because the situation is so complicated and so full of murky facts. It looks chaotic and dangerous to me: I find the viewpoint and reporting of leftist blogger As'ad AbuKhalil of The Angry Arab News Service to be the most perceptive, sympathetic and useful: he ruthlessly critiques the brutality and excesses of both the Syrian government and its "Free Syrian Army" opposition. He has raked over the coals the uncritical western supporters of both sides in this conflict, and offers a profoundly humanistic empathy with the suffering multisectarian civilian population. A reading of As'ad AbuKhalil suggests a conflict far more complicated and tragic than a mere rebellion against a dictator is underway, full of forces who want a society that many people in Syria would be right to fear.

The "Arab Spring" has been a huge challenge for the left. Some, with some misguided notion that opponents of imperialism must embrace authoritarians politically when imperialism comes knocking, rushed first to the defense of the late Colonel Gaddafi and now to the defense of President Assad. While I do agree that opposing the intervention of U.S. imperialism in the region must come first for revolutionary and internationalist minded people here, I cannot set aside my disdain for dictators and authoritarian regimes to somehow embrace the same monsters who have been repressing their own societies for decades. The leftists who support Assad are, frankly, creepy. That is most assuredly not any kind of "solidarity" with the Syrian people. 

On the other hand some social democrats have rushed to support the NATO bombing of Libya and urge the Western arming of Syrian rebels in the name of "bourgeois democracy." In the tradition of the so-called "state department socialists" of old, these leftists forget the cardinal rule of the epoch of imperialism: that "The main enemy of every people is in their own country! ... The main enemy is at home." These leftists forget the global nature of the imperialist war against the peoples of the world; and somehow they never get around to actually arguing for the real social change of class revolution and the overthrow of capitalism in the post-Arab Spring nations. It seems to me poignantly obvious that no good will come from the meddling of the biggest imperialist power in the world — the USA — combined with the former colonial lords of Syria — Turkey and France — in that country no matter how egregious the rule of Assad. The humanitarian pretensions of the West are illusions and lies, and should be called out as such.  

It's true that the presence of Israel at Syria's door makes Syria a much more complicated situation for NATO and the U.S.; and Obama's government has already denounced a wing of the Syrian opposition as Al-Qaeda-tainted terrorists. But once again I don't think it's actual solidarity with the Syrian people not to tell the truth about Western intentions for the Syrian people. They want a docile Syria, back in the arms and markets of the West, even less of a threat to Israel than the tough-talking Ba'ath regime of Syria has actually been. They don't want popular power in Syria anymore than they want it in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen...or the United States. The social democrats are attempting to paint their opponents on the left as supporters of Assad, and while this is a convenient lie for their own arguments, it seems to me quite far from the truth. Which brings me finally here, below, to a point of view that resonates with me.

The lengthy piece below that I am re-posting in full first appeared in Peacenotes, but I first read it when an anarchist comrade called attention to the anarchist blog Tahrir-ICN. Pseudonymously credited to a Syrian anarchist named "Mohammed," this piece has done what the American left has failed to do: offered empathy with the trials of the Syrian people but suggested that social transformation, called here a "libertarian alternative," is absolutely the only real solution. Bravo to the anarchists, for daring to remind us leftists to not be afraid of our own supposed ideals. 

You know what? If you want another world free of oppression and class misery, you have to fight for it now. No more waiting. No more silence about what is possible. About what is necessary.

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SYRIA: An anarchist among jihadists

December 2012

A view from the grassroots of the Syrian revolution.

As an anarchist it wasn’t easy for me to be among Jihadists, but for some reason, it wasn’t the same treating them as a doctor.

From the first moment I entered the hospital where I was working I was clear that I would treat anyone who needed my help, be they civilians, or fighters from any group, religion or sect. I was determined that no one would be mistreated inside that hospital, even if they were from Assad’s army.

It is true that not all the free army militants are devoted jihadists, although most of them think — or say — that what they are practising is ‘Jihad’. But the truth is that there are a lot of ordinary people among them, as in any armed struggle.

Yes, I helped some jihadists to survive and others to go back to fight. But my real intention was to help the masses I belong to, firstly as a physician, and secondly as an anarchist.

My real problem, and that of the oppressed in general I think, is not with god himself, but with human beings who act as gods and are so sick with authority that they think and act like gods, be they secular dictators like Assad or Islamic imams.

God himself is never as deadly dangerous as those who ‘speak’ for him.

My first and lasting impression about the current situation in Syria is that there is no longer a popular revolution going on there. What is taking place is an armed revolution that could now simply degenerate into a civil conflict.

The Syrian people — who showed unprecedented courage and determination in the first few months of the revolution, defying Assad’s regime despite its brutality — are now exhausted. Nineteen long months of fierce repression, hunger, widespread scarcity and continuous bombardment by the regime’s army have weakened their spirit. And the beneficiary of all this hasn’t been the regime, but the opposition, especially the Islamists.

Drawing on its international relationships — especially those with the rich Gulf despotisms — the latter can now feed and support the hungry population in the areas controlled by its forces. Without such support, a grave humanitarian situation would be taking place.

But this support is not provided for free, either by the Gulf rulers or the opposition leaders. They, like any other authoritarian force, are asking the masses for submission and obedience, and this can only mean the real death of the Syrian revolution as a courageous popular act of the Syrian masses.

The problem with what is happening now in Syria is not only the difficult and bloody process of changing a ruthless dictatorship, but that we may be substituting it with another dictatorship, which could be worse and bloodier.

Early in the revolution, a small number of people — mainly devoted Islamists — claimed to represent the revolting masses and appointed themselves the true representative of the revolution. This went unchallenged by the mainstream of the revolutionary masses and intellectuals. We [anarchists] opposed these claims, but we were — and still are — too few to make any real difference.

These people claimed that what was taking place was a religious war, not just a revolution of oppressed masses against their oppressor, and they aggressively used the fact that the oppressor [Assad] was from a different sect of Islam than the majority of the people he was exploiting — a sect that Sunni scholars have judged to be against the teachings of true Islam.

We were shocked by the fact that the majority of Alawis (the sect of the current dictator), who are poorer and more marginalised than the Sunni majority, supported the regime; and participated in his brutal suppression of the revolution. And this was used as ‘evidence’ of the ‘actual religious war’ taking place between Sunnis and Alawis.

Then came the material support from the Gulf rulers.

Now the potential for any real popular struggle is decreasing rapidly. Syria today is governed by weapons, and only those who have them can have a say about its present and future.

And this is not just true for Assad’s regime and its Islamic opposition. Everywhere in the Middle East the great hopes are disappearing rapidly. The Islamists seem to be getting all of the benefits of the people’s courageous struggles and could easily initiate the process of establishing their fanatical rule without strong opposition from the masses.

The other issue that I think is important for us — Arab anarchists and the Arab masses — is how to build the libertarian alternative. That is, how to initiate effective anarchist or libertarian propaganda and build libertarian organisations.

To tell the truth, I have never tried to convince anyone to be an anarchist and have always thought that trying to affect others is another way of practicing authority upon them.

But now I see this issue from another perspective. It is all about making anarchism ‘available’ or known to those who want to fight any oppressing authority, be they workers, the unemployed, students, feminists, the youth, or ethnic and religious minorities.

It is about trying to build an example — or sample — of the new free life, not only as a living manifestation of its potential presence, but also as a means to achieve that society.

Our Stalin or Bonaparte is not yet in power, and the Syrian masses still have the opportunity to get a better outcome than that of the Russian revolution. It is true that this is difficult and is becoming more so every minute, but the revolution itself was a miracle, and on this earth the oppressed can create their miracles from time to time.

We, Syrian anarchists, are putting all our cards and all our efforts with the masses. It could be no other way, or we would not deserve our libertarian name.