The Syrian civil war has been raging for four long years with over 400,000 known deaths as those who opposed the murderer dictator Assad attempted to free their country which was then pounced on by genocidal Islamists in ISIS and Al-Qaeda making a dangerous situation even more deadly.
The democratic world hesitated, ignored and turned it's backs on those fighting for freedom. Only the Kurds have managed to liberate themselves despite the efforts of Erdogan's Turkey. Only with help from allied air forces of the USA, UK and others did they manage to hang on and push back ISIS.
At the forefront of the war has been the battle for the city of Aleppo. Civilians trapped in a long nightmare facing first the barrel bombs of the Syrian air force then indiscriminate attacks by Russian aircraft. Civilian casualties are of no concern to either Assad or Putin.
As all this went on the left in this country remained (with very few exceptions) silent. Where was the Stop the War Campaign, Momentum, the Communist Party or the new messiah Jeremy Corbyn? Where were the demonstrations, the pickets or the protests?
The Morning Star gives the game away with it's headline "Final Liberation in Sight". All along the mealy mouthed "anti-imperialists" had maintained a distance, always blaming the West, the democracies, the free world within which they live as villains. It suits them not that actions take place from the countries they sympathise with on the ideological grounds that their enemies enemy is their friend.
As the Baathists (Syrian Fascists) conquer the remains of Aleppo reports of disappearances have now been replaced by tales of massacres. Assad and Putin's victory will be a bloody one which given the nature of their regimes is not surprising.
There was a time when the left saw Russia either as a "socialist" state (Communist Parties) or a "degenerated workers state (Trotskyists) but the USSR collapsed at the end of the eighties. Russia is now another capitalist state with growing nationalist fever and developing it's own imperialist ambitions in competition with the rest of the world.
Why do the comrades still defend it. More to the point why do they defend Assad whose brutal regime employed torture and murder of all political opponents as government policy? Why do the left treat these regimes (and other fascist regimes such as Iran) with kid gloves.
Their twisted ideology sees the Western democracies as a barrier to their political ambitions. Their feting and support for dictatorships should serve as a warning of what will happen under their rule should they get their chance.
The left died on the streets of Aleppo today.
Say the people who think that Russian hackers swung the EU referendum.
ReplyDeleteThere is much castigation of the Morning Star for its coverage of Aleppo. But it is unique among national newspapers in having opposed every British military intervention of the last 20 years. The best that can be said of the war in Sierra Leone is that it failed to deliver any improvement. All of the others have been catastrophic. I say again that the Morning Star is the only national newspaper to have opposed each and every one of them.
A small number of MPs is also in that venerable category. Of those, by far the most prominent today is Jeremy Corbyn. He even voted against the war in Libya, and how about that for civilian casualties? Only a handful of Labour MPs did that. But precisely one Conservative did so. One.
Possibly more than anything else, the British Right now defines itself by reference to its having supported the wars of Clinton and Bush, Blair and Cameron. Russia and Iran can do no good in its eyes. Israel and the Gulf tyrannies, supremely Saudi Arabia, can do no evil. America was in the latter category, and it looks as if the next President might keep it there after all.
The British Right is first and foremost the War Party, and it is very proud to be so, despite having been proved horrifically wrong over, and over, and over again. Against, which is the key point, Seumas Milne and Andrew Murray, Lindsey German and John Rees, Tariq Ali and John Pilger. Against Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, George Galloway and Ken Livingstone. Against Ken Loach and two million people, including the young Richard Burgon, on the streets of London in 2003. Against Dennis Skinner and Ronnie Campbell, the ghost of Tony Benn and the ghost of Michael Foot.
Against the vulgar and presumptuous interference of organised labour in political affairs. Against the vulgar and presumptuous existence of organised labour at all, for it is not a coincidence that the hated rail unions are all stalwarts of the anti-war movement. Against Jeremy Corbyn and the Morning Star.
The liberation of Aleppo is not a pretty sight. But what do you think that the liberation of, say, Paris looked like? A tea dance? Putin and Assad are bad. But their enemies are worse. Far, far, far worse. Those enemies are armed by Saudi Arabia, on occasion even fighting under its flag. In that full knowledge, Britain arms Saudi Arabia. The head-choppers, crucifiers and heart-excisers are armed by Britain.