Stop the War Coalition - appeasers of tyranny

As the world watches the unfolding crisis in the Crimea you'd expect these so-called anti-war types to be protesting outside the Soviet Russian embassy demanding peace and err.. perhaps that withdraws his troops. Not so with the Stop the War Coalition.

Ageing trotskyist Lindsey German has other ideas apparently and asks:

Who is the aggressor? The obvious answer seems to be that it is Russia, but that is far from the whole picture.

Really who else's troops are marching into the Ukraine?

US secretary of state John Kerry has made strong statements condemning Russia, and British prime minister David Cameron has argued against intervention and for national sovereignty. No one should take lessons from people who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and bombed Libya. Last year, these war makers wanted to launch their fourth major military intervention in a decade, this time against Syria.

Strong statements? That's not boots marching in the streets Lyndsey old girl. 

As for Afghanistan, I seem to recall Russia had a stab at that one not that long ago. And what of Chechnya South Ossetia and Georgia. And while we're talking about Syria, what exactly did the StWC do to try and stop the conflict there.

Nothing of course.

The trouble is that the StWC is run by a group of disaffected SWP members called Counterfire. Not a very successful group. Turns out they couldn't even run a cafe. True that one, it went bankrupt.

Bit like their ideas I suppose. Undeterred Lyndsey continues:

Those who demand anti-war activity here in Britain against Russia are ignoring the history and the present reality in Ukraine and Crimea.....

The job of any anti-war movement is to oppose its own government's role in these wars, and to explain what that government and its allies are up to.

Excuse me? "Strong statements" are NOT the same as sending in the troops. I don't see British or American troops wandering around Sevastopol. They are Russian. Full stop. She then alleges:

The crisis in Ukraine has much to do with the situation in Syria, where major powers are intervening in the civil war. The defeat for intervention last year has infuriated the neocons. They are determined to start new wars.

I agree that it has much to do with Syria. Putin's backing for the brutal Assad dictatorship keeps the war going. Without backing from Russia and it has to be said China, both Assad and the Islamist nutters may have been stopped by now.

And the StWC did nothing then as it does now.

StWC appears to stand for Stop the West Coalition, appeasers of Putin, North Korea (Lyndsey blames the USA for tensions there to) and backed the Hamas terrorists when their rocket attacks forced Israel to defend itself.

Not just one sided, but wrong sided on on the sides of dictators and terrorists.

I'll leave the last word to The Economist

Ms German conveniently ignores interventions in Syria by those “major powers” that she finds more palatable than the US or Britain—Iran and Russia. That, and her comment about China, suggests a preference for illiberal non-Western powers over liberal Western ones. It is an oddly one-sided comparison: she delights in listing Western flaws (real and imagined) while unquestioningly accepting anti-Western dogma. For one who leads an organisation committed to “stopping the war”, it is a fatal error.

Further reading: Russia, the Ukraine and the International Left by Eric Lee.