Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by American Dream » Tue Oct 18, 2016 8:32 pm
American Dream » Sat Aug 31, 2013 11:26 am wrote:
THE TWILIGHT OF VANGUARDISM
by David Graeber
One might sum it up like this:
1. Marxism has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about
revolutionary strategy.
2. Anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary
practice.
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/displa ... /index.php
by dada » Wed Oct 19, 2016 1:10 am
by American Dream » Wed Oct 19, 2016 8:01 am
by dada » Wed Oct 19, 2016 9:39 am
by American Dream » Wed Oct 19, 2016 10:40 am
by coffin_dodger » Wed Oct 19, 2016 11:18 am
I do think it's commendable that you want to think about what you post. Cultivating that quality is generally for the good around here.
by American Dream » Thu Dec 01, 2016 12:17 pm
De-Identity Theft: “What’s Left?” December 2016, MRR #403
When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink. When tired, sleep.
― Attributed variously to Baizhang (720-814), Tanxia Tianran (736-824), Huihai (788), Linji (867), or Bankei (1622-1693)
I am against imperialism, be it French, British, US or Chinese. I am not an ‘anti-imperialist’, since that is a political position supporting national liberation movements opposed to imperialist powers.
I am (and so is the proletariat) against fascism, be it in the form of Hitler or Le Pen. I am not an ‘anti-fascist’, since this is a political position regarding the fascist state or threat as a first and foremost enemy to be destroyed at all costs, i.e. siding with bourgeois democrats as a lesser evil, and postponing revolution until fascism is disposed of.
—Gilles Dauvé
I’m going to start a new philosophical movement while I wait to learn whether this country elected the corporatist-globalist-multiculturalist or the nativist-isolationist-populist to be president. It’s like waiting to hear whether the terminal diagnosis is heart failure or cancer. Or the COD is death by firing squad or death by lethal injection. Either way, it’s not good. As for my philosophical movement, I think I’ll call it de-identity.
The germ for my de-identity philosophy started when I took a writing workshop from Cary Tennis who used the Amherst Writers & Artists method developed by Pat Schneider. The AWA appropriated writer William Stafford’s aphorism—“A writer is someone who writes”—and built it into a writing methodology that emphasizes spontaneous writing techniques employed in a group process unencumbered by criticism or deadlines. The whole experience was a little too hippie-dippy-new-agey for my tastes and not at all conducive to honing the craft of writing. So I was glad when Cary developed the idea of the Finishing School, which helped me finish rewriting my second novel.
The phrase “a writer is someone who writes” remains troublesome for me however, not the least because it’s a tautology that means little and tells us less. A dancer is someone who dances. A policeman is someone who polices. A bricklayer is someone who lays bricks. These statements are not just self-evident, they are redundant. Am I a writer if all I do is write a grocery list every morning? If I write the orders for the execution of prisoners on death row? If I write nonsensical word salad screeds because I’m schizophrenic? And how long do I remain a writer once I stop writing? Five minutes? Twenty-four hours? Or once I earn the appellation, is it good for life? This all sounds rather hazy even as the phrase seems vaguely self-congratulatory.
Yes I can be harsh on the AWA’s inspiration and methodology even as I acknowledge that it works for some people to encourage them to write. I have similar reservations for the process and declarations of AA, including their signature “I’m so-and-so and I’m an alcoholic” statement, even while I grant that AA does work for some people to keep them sober. If nothing else, the placebo effect is quite real even though any “cure” remains elusive. My concern is with the identitarian claims that such statements foster and whether they hinder or help the efforts of those who make them. I think that the attempt to fix one’s identity—“I am a writer” or “I am an alcoholic”—in order to fix one’s problems—“I can’t write” or “I drink too much”—ultimately does more harm than good. Rather than face their declining writing abilities, Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide. Certainly, creative individuals like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams were tired and depressed from constantly dealing with their self-admitted addictions and may have committed suicide as a consequence. Issues of declining health and mental problems combined with issues of addiction and creative obsession complicated matters for all four of these individuals, but this but doesn’t negate the point I’m hoping to make.
In line with Gilles Dauvé’s above distinction between opposing imperialism and being an anti-imperialist, or opposing fascism and being an anti-fascist, I rarely call myself an anarchist, a left communist, or even an anti-authoritarian these days. I support most, if not all the positions associated with these political identities at the same time that I reject the inclusive wingnuttery of anarchism, the vulgar dogmatism of left communism, and the kneejerk sectarianism of both. A similar attitude informs my comments in a previous column that sometimes a vote is just a vote. I’ve voted in the Peace and Freedom Party primaries much of my adult life, which doesn’t make me a leftover 60s Leftist. I voted for Barack Obama for president both times around, which doesn’t make me a Democrat. And I voted for Bernie Sanders, which doesn’t make me a democratic-socialist.
Defining a political identity based on voting, or even electoral politics, is ludicrous because that’s not all I do. To expand on a bumper sticker type of mentality, I vote but I also sign petitions, write letters, demonstrate, protest, commit civil disobedience, and riot. Pointing out the broad range of my political involvements is one way of de-indentifying with any one particular political activity, but it doesn’t actually decontextualize me and my politics. Quite the opposite. If I sum up all my individual political tactics into a personal political whole, I arrive at an overall political strategy, that being of an independent-minded, left-of-liberal kind of person. What I’m after instead is what I alluded to above in discussing writing. I’m trying to be overly literal with the phrase “a writer is someone who writes.”
I am a writer only when I write. I am a reader only when I read. I am a critic only when I criticize. I am a voter only when I vote. You get the idea.
It’s one of the flip sides of the Zen saying at the top of this column. And it has some interesting implications. A tongue-in-cheek Zen aphorisms I like is “don’t just do something, sit there” which flips a common saying. When I sit zazen, my intent is to be mindful, to be here now, to be in the moment. So if I’m doing nothing, I’m being nothing. At the moment I sit, my intention is to have no ego. My intention is to have no identity.
And I bet you thought I was going to rail against identity politics.
by American Dream » Thu Apr 06, 2017 8:55 am
that short period after Assad commits a horrible atrocity when “anti-imperialists” go quiet as they figure out whether it was a 1) a media fabrication 2) someone else’s fault 3) not really the work of Assad 4) totally justified
by American Dream » Sat Apr 08, 2017 6:47 am
by American Dream » Mon Apr 10, 2017 10:11 am
Syria, imperialism and the left
Some see this intervention as the biggest danger and tend therefore to side with the regime as a kind of lesser evil. Others see that regime's oppression of the revolt as reason, not only to support that revolt, but to support (or at least, pointedly not to oppose) western aid to the armed struggle, either in the form of weapons for the insurgents, or a no-fly zone, or maybe air support for the Free Syrian Army, like NATO did in Lybia. Yet others say: yes to the Syrian Revolution, no to Western intervention. The latest position comes close to what I think and is not as bad as the first two. Supporting the regime is criminal; supporting intervention is criminal; supporting the revolt as if it is a 'thing' that can be supported as a whole, while opposing intervention, however, is seriously problematic as well.
First, the support-or-tolerate-Assad-/ down-with-the-revolt- position. We leave the fans of the dictatorship to their own devices. Much more interesting are the forces who say: yes, Assad may be a horrible dictator. But he heads a state that has progressive aspects. First, because Syria stands in opposition to Israeli occupation and US -led imperialism. Syria supported hezbollah against Israeli occupation in Libanon. Syria supported Hamas, and Palestinian resistance more broadly. The fall of the Syrian regime threatens to end all that, and would play to the advantage of the Israeli state and its US sponsors/ backers. Syria is one of the remaining allies of Iran. The Iranian regime is under pressure of Western powers – US, Israel, but also Western European states. A collapse of the Syrian dictatorship would weaken Iran and strengthen the imperialist pressures against Iran. In short: Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Palestinian resistance form an “axis of resistance” - a word actually used by an official of the Iranian regime pledging support to Assad - against imperialism and Zionism. Syria, as part of this resistance alliance, should be defended.
The revolt against the Syrian regime, so this reasoning continues, is mainly an instrument for Western interests – US, Israel, but also conservative pro-Western regimes like Qatar and Saudi Arabia – to weaken the resistance axis. The armed insurgency, supported by Qatari and Saudi and most likely also Turkish arms, can best be seen as a Washington-directed proxy war against not just Syria, but mainly Iran. However we may dislike Assads regime, that regime has to be defended; self-reform of the regime, or maybe a negotiated solution with Assad in place, is internally, the best we can hope for. But in the meantime, a defeat of the armed revolt should be applauded. That is, basically, what the blog Moon of Alabama, a well-informed but terribly one sided source, hopes for. The position of the World Socialist Web Site, Trotskyist, less friendly to Assad but just as hostile to the revolt, comes close to this as well. That website talks about a "U.S.- led war to overthrow Assad".
The analysis leading to such a choice is thoroughly wrong-headed. First, the anti-imperialism of Syria is doubly fake. The Assad dynasty has collaborated with the US empire as it saw fit. Father Hafez, Assad the Elder, sent Syrian soldiers alongside the US, UK, Saudi and other troops, to fight the Iraqi state in the Gulf War in 1991. Son Bashar, Assad the Younger, helpfully accepted prisoners the US sent to Syria to be “interrogated”, and after 9/11 generally collaborated with US intelligence in the fight against Al Qaeda. Besides, the Syrian army was quite bad at fighting Israel, but quite good at repressing Palestinians in Lebanon, just as it is quite expert at bombing Damascus and Aleppo these days. Syria as part of a resistance axis was, and remains, a bit of a joke. Syria as an enemy of anything that even looks like real resistance, however, is not at all funny.
There is a deeper sense in which the anti-imperialism of the Syrian regime is fake. The Syrian state, and its business backers, represents local capitalist interests. Their alliance with the Iranian regime makes them a part of a regional, Tehran-centered power bloc; the Hezbollah and Hamas connection gives this bloc extra power, the rhetoric of resistance, often combined with hints of Shiite identity against Sunni identity forms the ideological mix justifying things. Behind rhetoric and ideology stand powerful state and economic interests. That Iran strives for nuclear capability – with or without an armed dimension – is not surprising. What we see here are the interests and ambitions of a regional imperialist bloc under Iran leadership, of which Syria is a part, a willing accomplice if you will.
Things don't end there. The regional Iran-Syria alliance is connected to bigger powers, China and above all Russia. Syria has been armed by Russia for a long time; Russia sees Syria as a remaining ally in a time where most states hav tilted – or been forced – in the arms of the US empire. Russia has a military naval base in Syria. Besides, Russia is worried about jihady movements on her southern border, and sees the officially secular Syrian regime – which smashed a Muslim Brotherhood revolt, repression culminating in a state-imposed massacre in Hama in 1982 – as being on the same side in the fight against “Muslim fundamentalism”. All this, and probably more, makes Syria a junior part of an bigger imperialist power bloc, led by Russia.
Defending Syria against the armed insurgency – even if we would accept that this insurgency is just a proxy force fighting for Western/ Saudi/Qatari interests – means siding with one wing of imperialism led from Moscow against an admiddedly even bigger one led from Washington. Siding with Assad is siding with imperialisms weaker wing. There is nothing remotely anti-imperialist, progressive or revolutionary about that choice.
It is also wrong to support the Assad regime for internal reasons, as if it were a 'bulwark against neoliberalism' or something like that. Yes, the Baath party enforced reforms in the 1960s, and some of these reforms benefitted workers and poor peaasants. However, the thing was bureaucratically controlled from above; Syria became a very authoritarian welfare state, with that state as an enforcer of capitalism and a capitalist in its own right. In 1970, when Assad the Father took power, the regime already began to shift. Assad the Son presided over neoliberal reforms, away from the welfare state aspects, and away from state dominance in the economy. It was accelerating neoliberal reform that undermined the limited economic security that existed. The basic, unspoken deal between regime and population – we obey you; we expect you to give us food and shelter in return – broke down. An oppressive, but somewhat paternalistic bureaucratic clique on top evolved intio a kind of mafia.
Anger, rooted in insecurity felt by already poor people, is one of the driving forces that led to the outbreak of revolt. The protests generally started in poor neighbourhoods, in suburbs of the cities where people from a poor rural background lived. It is no accident that Aleppo, a relatively wealthy place, only recently became the scene of rebellion; while poor places like Deraa saw protests from the beginning. It is no accident that people from the business class generally remained supportive of, or at least tolerant towards, the regime up till recently, and only shifted to a position on the fence: hesitating between seeking shelter under Assad's dictatorship or seeking for new protectors under a new leadership. The backbone of the revolt – even if it expresses itself too often in a reactionary fashion – remains the urban and rural, mostly but not exclusivey Sunni, poor. That, by the way, makes any rejection of the complete revolt as nothing but a proxy force for reactionary powers, very unfair and unjust.
In sum, the regime is not anti-imperialist. It is not seriously anti-neoliberal as well. It should be neither defended nor supported. It has to be opposed and rejected totally, and not be given any progressive-sounding apologies. Poor and oppressed people in rebellion against it don't deserve to be contemptuously sneered at. Whatever side anyone can be on, certainly not on the side of the mafia ruling and exploiting Syria by brutal means.
by American Dream » Tue Apr 11, 2017 4:49 am
Syria, imperialism and the left (2)
Some people on the moderate but also the Trotskyist-influenced left defend not only the Syrian revolt, but also, sadly, find Western intervention against Assad quite acceptable. Second part of a three-part series.
Posted By
rooieravotr
Aug 9 2012
That we detest the Syrian dictatorship enough to want it to be seen overthrown, does not mean that we should become cheerleaders for the revolt against the Assad regime! That brings us at the other side of the argument, which basically goes like this. The revolt against the dictatorship is a struggle for freedom and justice . First demonstrations, later armed struggle, against the regime is fully justified and should be supported by progressives. Not only that: the rebels have the right to get arms where they can find them, and we should not stand in the way. If the CIA, the Saudi, Turkish, Qatari states send arms to the Free Syrian Army, that is useful. If the rebels want a no fly zone and call for air strikes on Syria army positions, this also should go unopposed. Western help to the revolt may have its downsides. Still, better that the revolt wins – like the Lybian one – with NATO aid , than that it becomes suppressed while the West stands aside. Such a pro-revolt position, with a refusal to oppose Western interference (to say the least) is expressed by moderate progressives, like Juan Cole on Informed Comment, like Paul Woodward on War in Context , but also by people considering themselves Marxist and revolutionary, like Louis Proyect on Unrepentant Marxist , and Pham Binh on North Star . Both are from a Trotskyist background.
What we see here is: legitimate sympathy for a struggle against oppression, combined with the most wrongheaded search for allies where allies cannot be found: in Western imperialism. Also, some very unsavoury aspects of the revolt tend to get overlooked or badly underestimated by people like Binh, Proyect, Cole and Woodward. First, there already is a serious amount of Western intervention. There is a consistent pattern of arms support from Saudi and Qatari sources to insurgent groups in Syria. The CIA is, at the very least, monitoring things, while the US is giving “non lethal” aid to “the opposition”. That is: US-delivered communication tools make it possible to use Saudi-delivered arms to strike more efficiently against Syrian regime forces. The distincion between 'lethal' and 'non-lethal' aid may help Obama prevent trouble with Congressional oversight. In real war terms, the distinction is not that relevant. There are other forms of US interference as well: the Syrian National Congress, the exiled opposition umbrella – not taken seriously by many anti-regime fighters in Syria itself, by the way – has spokespeople who are connected to all kinds of US government-funded bodies acting to undermine the Syrian regime for their own reasons. There is also a US role in 'advising' Syrian opposition forces on a transition to a post-Assad regime. Connections go bak to 2005, when the Bush administration had Syria on its hit list. Charrlie Skelton describes a number of these connections in the Guardian.
The big worry for the US at the moment seems to be a 'power vacuum', a collapse of the Syrian state; the US hope is a managed transition from above, Assadism without Assad. That is, the US wants to get rid of the dictator, without the revolt being in a position to enforce thorough change from below. For instance, you can read talks are described in Foreign Policy about meetings, held in Germany, between opposition politicians and US experts, with State Department money involved and U.S officials indirectly in touch. “The idea is to preserve those parts of the Syrian state that can be carried over while preferring to reform the parts that can't. For example, large parts of the Syrian legal system could be preserved.” Dissidents having been punished by the 'Syrian legal system' might disagree. The US supports the opposition in order to prevent its development in a revolutionary direction. They would have much preferred to work with Assad himself. Now that he proves a bit recalcitrant, he must be replaced – with a somewhat more amenable look-alike. Encouraging this kind of support for the revolt is encouraging the events to develop in a more and more counterrevolutionary direction.
The same applies to the arms deliveries that the Saudi and Qatari regimes organize, no doubt with US toleration, permission, maybe encouragement. They do not strengthen the revolt as such. They certainly do not strengthen the forces in Syria who try to bould broad-based protests, demonstrations and so on, and who try to resist the increasing militarization of the struggle. Resistance coalitions like the Local Coordination Committees, for instance, may not find Qatari guns very useful. The arms end up in, you guessed it, armed insurgent'groups. Of course, there are strings attached. The Saudi and Qatari regimes detest the Syrian regime, not because it is an oppressive dictatorship – they operate an oppressive dictatorship at home - , but because it opposes their ambitions and religious preferences. The Saudi state stands opposed to Iranian regional ambitions, and therefore considers Iran's ally Syria, as an enemy as well. Both the Saudi and Qatari monarchies encourage a conservative Sunni identity, which stands opposed to the ostentatiously secular Syrian regime with its Shiite friends in Tehran and Lebanon. Both these monarchies tend to support, not 'the Syrian opposition', but the most right-wing, Sunni-based Jihadi forces within the revolt – with all the sectarian dynamics this implies. The Telegraph gives interesting details. Saudi support mainly goes to such forces within the Free Syrian Army. Qatari support tends to go to groups outside the FSA umbrella, independent Jihadi groups. There is a bit of competition between those regimes. But both work in the same direction: towards replacement of the Assad dictatorship with a conservative Sunni-dominated Jihadi regime, hostile to Iran. Where these kind of right wing forces are strong – in Homs - members of the Alawite minority feel threatened and insecure, with good reason. Many Alawites have already fled.
There may be even bigger interests at stake. Pepe Escobar describes an oil-and-gas connection. Syria was involved in a pipeline project connecting Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. This would leave Western ally Turkey out of the loop and without the loot to go with projects like these. And it would help Iran, which is not what Washington wants. Now, it would be simplistic to say: aha, so that is why the US and Turkey wants Assad to go! To put a stop to this project that harms US and Turkish interests! But that the thing is wholly unconnected is not very credible either.
What all this US, Qatari, Turkish, Saudi activity amounts to is a serious effort to derail the revolt, instrumentalize it and turn it intio a proxy war against Syria and against Iran as well. The more intervention like this there is going to be, the weakar any prospect that anything positive comes out of the struggle becomes. A Western-backed, Saudi-and-Qatari-armed, well-organized insurgency may get rid of Assad for sure. But this wil not be liberation, only the replacement of one oppressive regime with another. The less Western interference, the more chance that this will not be the fate of the revolt. Supporting or encouraging Western intervention against the Assad regime is supporting a counterrevolutionary derailment of whatever liberatory dynamics the revolt may possess or have possessed.
by Elvis » Tue Apr 11, 2017 6:01 am
http://libcom.org/blog/media-clinton-su ... ibyan-disa
Media, Clinton supporters offer frenzied support for Syria intervention, refuse to learn from Libyan disaster
Cheerleaders for Syrian intervention refuse to learn lessons from recent history
Hillary Clinton gave her first post-election interview on Wednesday at the Women in the World summit, hosted by the New York Times and Toyota. Speaking to NYT's Nicholas Kristof, Clinton responded to the news earlier that day of a chemical weapons attack in the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib, killing upwards of 80 people. "I really believe we should have and still should take out [Syrian Prime Minister Bashar al-Assad's] air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them”. Clinton's wish came true just hours after her remarks when the Trump administration announced that it had launched 59 cruise missiles at the Al Sharyat airfield in Syria, alleging that the Syrian government was responsible for the atrocities in Idlib.
The cruise missile attacks were described with frenzied, near religious praise across corporate and state media outlets. The New York Times ran a piece of “news analysis” entitled “On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First” (the title has now been changed). “Mr. Trump’s advisers framed his decision in the dry language of international norms and strategic deterrence. In truth, it was an emotional act by a man suddenly aware that the world’s problems were now his — and that turning away, to him, was not an option,” wrote NYT's Mark Lander. In the opinion pages came the headlines “Trump Was Right to Strike Syria” and “Syria’s ‘Conundrum’: Limited Strikes Risk Entrenching Assad’s Strategy", with author Max Fisher warning that limited strikes may not be enough and widespread bombardments of Syria should be seriously considered. Praise in center-left TV outlets was equally effusive, with CNN's Fareed Zakaria remarking, “'I think Donald Trump became president of the United States' made his bones last night.” In a moment capable of making North Korean newscasters blush, MSNBC's Brian Williams provided surreal commentary to footage obtained by the network of the missiles being launched.
https://youtu.be/BR6e9CUMbwUWe see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean. I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: “I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons.” And they are beautiful pictures, of fearsome armaments making what is, for them, a brief flight over this airfield.
Wall Street reacted to the news favorably as well, with an increase to the share price of Raytheon, the company that produced the missiles, along with arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.
On Twitter, Clinton supporters attempted various forms of mental gymnastics to reconcile the fact that Clinton and Trump now shared nearly identical policy positions on Syria.
Trump's bombings were different, Clinton supporters argued. If Clinton was in charge, she would have made sure those airfields were more thoroughly bombed, and she wouldn't bomb just because of silly political reasons, she would bomb because she deeply cares about the Syrian people.
When it comes to “humanitarian intervention” historical amnesia is the norm
Predictably, what seemed to be of little concern to Hillary fans and media cheerleaders was the fate of the last country whose government was unseated by U.S. intervention. Almost exactly 6 years ago, the U.S. began bombing Libya in order to topple the regime of Muammar Qaddafi.
It was in 2011, after describing Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and his wife as “friends of the family”, and failing to convince president Barack Obama to continue supporting Mubarak, that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was feeling nervous about her position in the White House cabinet and her image as a humanitarian. For these reasons, Clinton turned to Libya, seeing an opportunity to once again make a name for herself by spearheading a humanitarian bombing campaign. Despite the fact that U.S. officials were largely “relying on news reports” for information about the situation on the ground in Libya, Clinton managed to narrowly convince Obama to support military action in Libya. After playing off of and helping to spread wild and grotesquely racist reports that the Libyan government had distributed Viagra to “African mercenaries” and encouraged them to rape women, Clinton and the Obama administration sold the attacks to the public as humanitarian intervention, necessary to protect civilians, with the specific intention of stopping an impending massacre in the city of Benghazi.
After completely destroying Qaddafi's air force and air defenses within a manner of days, the U.S. began widespread bombing campaigns in an increasingly desperate effort to give the woefully out-organized and outgunned rebels an upper hand in the civil war. Despite numerous requests through a multitude of channels for a ceasefire and the initiation of peace talks, the U.S. refused to negotiate with the Libyan government, with Clinton personally ordering top Pentagon officials to break off negotiations with Qaddafi's son, Saif. After a war that lasted much longer than anticipated, Qaddafi was brutally executed by rebels on October 20th, 2011 after his convoy was bombed by NATO forces. Upon hearing the news Clinton gleefully remarked, “we came, we saw, he died!”
https://youtu.be/FmIRYvJQeHM
In the end, it was revealed that the stories about Viagra fueled rapes were a complete fabrication, and that while Qaddafi's soldiers had indeed committed rapes (not mass rapes as alleged), there were also numerous reports of rebels killing and raping African migrants who, likely in large part due to Western media reports, became the victims of extreme xenophobia. A subsequent UK parliamentary inquiry disproved the idea that there was evidence that Qaddafi was about to engage in a massacre in Benghazi. Despite achieving her apparently psychopathic goal of killing Qaddafi, Clinton's war-mongering has not helped the Libyan people, and the country which once boasted the highest living standards in Africa is now a failed state that is home to thousands of ISIS fighters who have rushed to fill the power vacuum left by Qaddafi's fall.
In her eagerness to gain political points from bombing Libya, Clinton disregarded the fact that the Libyan state's control over its three provinces, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan has been tenuous since the rule of Libya's first leader, King Idris, began in 1951.1 To this day, Libyans continue to place more importance on tribal allegiances than the nation-state system, something which Qaddafi understood and skillfully played off of. The collapse of Qaddafi's government has led to renewed tensions between the provinces, tensions which have been exacerbated by the spread of radical Islamism and various rivalries between NATO members.
After devastating Libya, the CIA took Libyan arms stockpiles and shipped them via a “rat line” to rebel groups in Syria, many of whom were affiliated with al-Qaeda. The arms shipments were a joint effort, made with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the three countries that were instrumental in sponsoring ISIS during its early stages. When the program was first launched jihadis were considered a lesser threat than the Russian aligned Assad, and CIA participation in the program did not stop until the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi. The arms shipments helped al-Qaeda rearm itself after being nearly destroyed by the U.S. troop surge in 2007-08.
If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again
The U.S. has proven itself totally incapable of achieving even modest foreign policy goals in Syria and the region at large. Furthermore, the motivations of our efforts have been far removed from the benign platitudes put forth by leaders like Hillary Clinton. How many more Libyas, Afghanistans, or Iraqs will it take before interventionists realize that the U.S. is not a "force for good" in the region? There is no reason to believe that Donald Trump is any more capable of bombing a path to peace than was Hillary Clinton. There is no war to support but the class war.
1.
Vandewalle, Dirk. A History of Modern Libya
by American Dream » Tue Apr 11, 2017 9:26 am
Syria, imperialism and the left (3)
There is a third position on the Syrian events: opposition to Assad and to Western interference. This position also is unsatisfactory in its way to positive account of the revolt. Third and final part of the series.
There is a third position on the Syrian events, defended by, for instance, people from the Socialist Workers' Party in Britain like Alex Callinicos and Simon Assaf, but also by an interesting left wing blog called Syrian Freedom Forever. The bare outline is summarized well by Simon Assaf:The Syrian revolution has two enemies. Assad wants to crush it to remain in power. The Western powers want to hijack it to ensure an friendly government replaces him
. He is right about the two enemies. Buts as we will see, he underestimates a third enemy.
Basically, this position supports the revolt, generally called a revolution. In this, it agrees with the position above, defended by Proyect, Cole, etcetera: they also like to talk about the 'Syrian revolution'. But supporters of this third position combine support for the revolt with a clear opposition to Western intervention. They rightly see these kind of interventions – like the Lybian NATO precedent - as an effort by Western imperialism to ostenstatiously stand on the side of “democracy and freedom” against “dictatorship”, in order to regain ideological influence and hegemony on the enfolding movements that became known as the 'Arab Spring'. When revolt ended the rule of the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, the US was seen as being on the wrong side. By supporting the Lybian and now the Syrian armed revolt they hope to be seen as freedom's friend again. This will help them to recuperate strugges and and lead resistance forces in a more pro-Western direction, and will help if regimes produced by revolts have to decide whom to sell oil to and who to sell arms from. In other words, intervening in Libya and Syria is a form of business investment taken with a longer view.
This analysis is sensible, the opposition to imperialist intervention is welcome. Where this position errs is in its estimate of the revolt itself, and of the amount of intervention already taking place. Callinicos, Assaf and the maker of Syria Freedom Forever write as if Western interference is basically a danger in the future to be warned against, not yet a big reality. I think this grossly underestimates the extent of deliveries of arms, equiment and advice already going on for months. It underestimates the relevance of the location where nerve centres of the FSA are based: in Turkey, controlled by Turkey, a NATO alley;. Such headquarters means a place to train fighers, to fall back to if defeat looms, to regroup to fight again. It is a serious contribution Turkey – and by implication, NATO and its US leadership, even though the US holds back from more open and voluminous intervention – is already making. Turkey has established a base where assistance to the fighters is coordinated and monitored. I think now the revolt would survive when Turkey would not allow FSA its bases: the resistance is too strong, too locally-rooted, to be defeated by such things. But it would still weaken the fight from a purely military point of view. Turkish support of this kind is one of the forms of intervention going on for more than a year now. This underestimation of the amount of intervention also characterizes the supporters of position two, the likes of Cole, Woodward and Binh. They find more intervention acceptable, while Callinicos annd Assaf warn against it. But both think that present interference amounts to not very much. I think they are wrong. And opposing intervention mainly in the future, while almost neglecting the intervention already taking place, is a rather weak form of opposing intervention.
They are also wrong in their rather positive picture of the revolt as a whole. For instance, SWP writers talk about “mass strikes” being part of the revolt. But the specifics of these strikes do not point to workers' action, but mainly to shops and businesses closing ther doors for one or more days. Youtube videos with empty streets with texts like 'General Strike' probably show business shutdowns like that. It is not always even clear wether they do so as a form of protest by the business classes themselves, or whether they are forced to do so by FSA fighters. There have been civil disobedience campaign initiatives in December 2011, talk of a "Dignity Strike" in December 2011 and January 2012 on the website of the Local Coordination Committees, one of the main resistance alliances. Whether much remains of these forms of struggles, I do not know. Of course, strikes and similar actions are rather difficult in a civil war situation. And ofcourse, there are different forms of workers' struggle. But the suggestion implied in the word “mass strikes” that there is a strong element of specifically workers' revolt is, I am afraid, wrong.
There are other aspects of the rather too positive picture these people are painting of the events. Sectarian dynamics, attacks on minorities, on non-Sunni communities like Alawites, execution and mistreatment of prisoners, are not denied. But they are not given much attention either. That FSA fighters don't just fight the armed regime forces, but also take revenge on people suspected of sympathizing with the regime; that parts of the resistence use bloodthirsty rhetoric against not just regime sypporters but against whole communities thought integrally to support the regime – the Alawites most of all – is not totally ignored. But it is treated as the sort of information that hurts the support the revolt deserves, and therefore not emphasized as it should be. The fact, however, is that these disagreeable aspects of the revolt are not minor incidents. They are logical practices for future bosses. They are symptomaticof a right wing of the revolt, a wing that is at the same time the deadly enemy of its liberatory potential. And this right wing is not a minor force; on the contrary, it is quite strong, and it seems to be growing.
This is the rational kernel in the otherwise despicable position of many of Assads 'critical' defenders: however horrible Assad may be, strong elements of the insurgency are no improvement. The revolt has not just two enemies: Assad and Western imperialism. It has a third enemmy: right wing forces operating inside the revolt, whether connected to outside reactionary powers or not. It is not totally irrelevant that many of the high-rank defectors of the Assad regime reappear to pronounce their support for the revolt – from exile in Qatar of all places, of all counterrevolutinary regimes in the region one of the most horrible. What kind of revolution is this, with a military base in Turkey, and two of its main sponsors the Saudi and Qatari regime? Asad Abu Khalil, on his blog the Angry Arab, asks questions like these, and gives item after item illustratiing these reactionary elements – and they are much more than just 'elements' - in the revolt. He exaggerates where he paints the FSA as almost only an Saudi/ Qatari / US proxy force, and misses some of the more positive things happening. But he should be taken seriously, as he is at the same time an opponent of the Assad regime and cannot stand its apologetics.
Yes, there is more to the revolt than the FSA; there is also the LCC, building community resistance. And no, the FSA is not just the sectarian outfit that for instance the Angry Arab says it is. But large parts of the FSA are sectarian outfits, and the various Jihadi groups outside it certainly are. That is not at all a reason to support the regime. But it should be a reason not to cheerlead the resistance as a whole, not talk about “The Syrian Revolution” as mainly a wave of progressive resistance. It is not. Yes, people had and still have very good and valid reasons to revolt. The rebellion has deep social roots, and resistance was and still is fully justified. But that does not at all mean that the dominant ideologies, practices and organisations now leading the revolt are just and supportable as well. They should be exposed and opposed just as ferociously as the regime should be exposed and opposed.
by MacCruiskeen » Tue Apr 11, 2017 10:30 am
by JackRiddler » Tue Apr 11, 2017 2:50 pm
Simon Assaf wrote:The Syrian revolution has two enemies. Assad wants to crush it to remain in power. The Western powers want to hijack it to ensure an friendly government replaces him
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