Syria and the Antiwar Tradition
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- Published on Wednesday, 02 November 2016 22:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1324 .... November 3, 2016
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Syria and the Antiwar Tradition
David Bush
There is major disorientation on the left in many Western countries when it comes to Syria and about how antiwar activists should respond to events on the ground in Syria and Iraq. The highly complex nature of the Syrian war involving a multitude of foreign states and non-state actors would, in the best of times, present the left with a real challenge to find political clarity. The fact that this is occurring precisely when the antiwar movement in countries like Canada and the United States are relatively weak only adds to the confusion.
The way in which the debate about the Syrian war has been framed and conducted by large parts of the left has been unhelpful... to say the least. Some have taken a pro-Assad/pro-Russia anti-imperialist line. This position views the popular uprising against Bashar al-Assad as reactionary and driven by U.S. imperialism.
Others frame the debate about the need to support the revolution against ISIS and the Assad regime (or lament the lack of support for the rebels from U.S. imperialism as Gilbert Achcar does). Sometimes this takes on tangible support for the YPG (an armed leftist/feminist Kurdish independence force) or supporting this or that force within the array of groups that make up the anti-Assad/anti-ISIS opposition. There are of course a variety of positions within this frame: some call for active intervention by the West to stop massacres by Assad, others call for arming the rebels or more humanitarian aide, while others equally condemn all sides.
