from the Solidarity Political Committee
August 28, 2013
McCain, Boehner, Graham, Kerry, Biden…the call of U.S. war hawks from both parties is growing louder. Their pretext, of course, is the chemical attack that killed hundreds of civilians near Damascus, adding to tens of thousands killed, and millions of refugees displaced, all manifestations of the cruelties of the Syrian civil war.
According to a senior administration official, President Obama has made “no decision” on military intervention (Reuters), but warplanes and military transporters are massing at Britain’s Akrotiri airbase on Cyprus, less than 100 miles from the Syrian coastline. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has announced that “all military assets” are in place for an imminent rocket attack on Syria from the eastern Mediterranean.
Advocates of military intervention point to the atrocities of the civil war, including the nerve gas attack. It seems overwhelmingly likely, though not absolutely certain, that the Syrian regime perpetrated that attack. But the United States and Britain are no strangers to committing war crimes or using chemical weapons — from the carpet bombing of Dresden ordered by Winston Churchill and the U.S. use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, to Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam to white phosphorus in Fallujah, Iraq.
Declassified documents published by Foreign Policy magazine just days ago detail U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s chemical attacks against Iran and the Kurds in the 1980s. Those attacks jointly constitute the largest use of chemical weapons in modern history.
Solidarity condemns U.S. military intervention in Syria. That’s not because we have any sympathy or support for the Assad regime. It’s because missiles, whether delivered from ship or plane, will certainly cause civilian casualties. It’s because bombing Syria will have nothing to do with protecting the population from further atrocities. And it’s because the United States has no legitimate right to attack countries whose governments it doesn’t like.
An attack by the U.S. and its allies could even have the consequence of strengthening Assad’s hold, giving the government cover as a fighter against Western imperialism. As one socialist group in Syria proclaimed, “Our revolution has no sincere ally, except the popular revolutions of the region and of the world and of all the militants struggling against regimes of ignorance and servitude and exploitation…No to Washington! No to Moscow!”
The Solidarity Political Committee calls upon our members to participate and help organize rallies and demonstrations against a dangerous and illegitimate U.S. military action that is likely to make an unfolding tragedy even worse.
Comments
3 responses to “Statement on Imminent U.S. Intervention in Syria”
“If Assad loses, the Syrian people may win.”
Are you sure that the anti-Assad forces are fighting for a workers and peasants democracy?…….when the reactionary arab monarchies became socialist?
Do we want a US/Nato protectorate in Syria (ready to strike the arab springs in Egypt and Tunisie far better than Assad can, not to mention an attack on Iran) after the US/Nato protectorate in Kosova?
Istvan
Missing here is commentary on the de facto arms embargo Western Imperialism has imposed on the anti-Assad forces. Many in the Syrian popular uprising have asked for weaponry to counter Assad’s tanks and jets. Would we be against the US imperialism sending such arms?
Think of the parallels with Spanish Civil War: Assad is Franco; Franco’s best friends were Hitler and Mussolini; Assad’s best friend is Putin. In 1936 the multifarious anti-Franco forces were assembled in the Spanish Republican government, which was helped by the counter-revolutionary Stalin. Today, the heteroclite anti-Assad opposition is helped by the counter-revolutionary regimes of Saudi-Arabia and Qatar. In 1936, the US, England, France refused to send arms to defend Spanish Republic, objectively assisting Franco. Today, these same countries have so far played the same role, objectively assisting Assad.
If Assad loses, the Syrian people may win. If Assad wins, the Syrian people are guaranteed to lose. Should we not also be calling on Western Imperialism to lift its arms embargo on the anti-Assad forces?
A new low in loupy “leftist” logic…the “multifarious” revolutionary workers and peasants militias in the Spanish civil war are now equivalent to the “heteroclite” Islamic thugs in Syria. I suppose that the POUM and the CNT (or even the International Brigades) were fighting for the same thing that the Al Quadaites in Syria are as well.
Perhaps the reason the “counter-revolutionary” Arab monarchies are backing the “rebels” has something to do with the character of their opposition to Assad, i.e., as reactionary as that of the Afghan mullahs “resistance” to the PDPA and the Sovs in the 1980s, the drug-dealers of the KLA in Kosovo in 1995 and the “rebels” in Libya last year. Perhaps that’s also why the US supported all of them and is currently supporting the so-called “Syrian revolution” as well. Unless, of course, you think that the CIA has been sitting on its hands all this time. Or that the Saudis and the other reactionary monarchies in the area are independent players.
Why bother opposing the US bombing Syria, if you are going to support arming the same side that they are doing the bombing for. Either way the American working class will have to foot the bill. And at a time when the ruling class claims that there’s no money around for jobs, health care, education, etc. Maybe your slogan should be the opposite of the antiwar movement’s traditional call, money for war, not for jobs, albeit “humanitarian” war. Or should we call for taxing the rich…to better fund their war.
Or are you so stupid and naive as to believe that the US will be bombing Assad in order to thwart the “revolution.” Then again, the same people tried to cover their tracks in Libya by claiming the same thing. Or perhaps they really believe that the Islamists are just a minority compared to the “socialists” and “democrats” within the Syrian opposition, the way John Kerry claims they are. Even if they were, it’s the reactionaries who have most of the weapons, who will be the ones the West gives the weapons to and who will use the weapons on whatever “left” exists over there as well. But, then again, there were people around in the late 1980s who claimed that the presence of a few anti-Soviet Maoists in Afghanistan was just as important as the role played by the mullahs and the CIA. Live a little on the “left,” learn even less!