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Pseudo-left parties promote US-French-British bombing of Syria
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04/16/pseu-a16.html
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Pseudo-left parties promote US-French-British bombing of Syria
By Will Morrow
16 April 2018
A number of political parties that call themselves socialist
proved they are nothing of the sort by lending support to Friday
night’s illegal US, French and British bombing of Syria.
Groups like the American International Socialist Organization
(ISO), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the French New
Anticapitalist Party (NPA) are pro-war organizations. They are
participating in a propaganda campaign with the capitalist press
organs and the intelligence agencies to spread the lie that the
bombings are justified on a “humanitarian” basis and that
additional military force is required. Socialists reject these
attempts to cover imperialist intervention in a fraudulent “left”
veneer.
First, these pseudo-left groups attack those who question the
legitimacy of the CIA and MI6 claims that Assad used chemical
weapons in Eastern Ghouta last week. They accept the claims
produced by the same military intelligence agencies that spread
the lie of “weapons of mass destruction” to justify the invasion
of Iraq, which led to the deaths of over 1 million people.
The NPA’s Joseph Daher wrote in an April 10 article titled
“Syria: A nightmare without end” that the Syrian government
“killed over 100 people in 24 hours, according to the first
estimates, with especially strong suspicions of the use of
chlorine and sarin gas.” Daher unquestionably accepts the claims
that the Assad regime carried out a chemical gas attack in Ghouta
on April 7. This charge has been promulgated throughout the media
without evidence in order to justify an illegal war of aggression
against Syria that has placed humanity on the verge of a nuclear
world war between the US and Russia. In a post-bombing statement
titled “With the Syrian people, against the bombings and all
imperialist intervention,” the NPA called for a “rejection of the
campaign to discredit the veracity of yet another criminal
chemical attack by the regime.”
The ISO’s article from April 13, “US missiles won’t stop Syria’s
suffering,” features a photo of a child on a ventilator taken from
the widely circulated video that the CIA claims is “proof” that
Assad used chemical weapons. The article states, “On April 7, a
chemical attack carried out by the Syrian government forces in the
city of Douma in southwestern Syria killed at least 43 people and
left many others struggling to breathe.” The article declares that
while the “Assad regime denied launching the chemical attack” and
the “Russian government likewise claimed the reports of a gas
attack were a ‘hoax,’” these “denials are a cruel lie.”
But US Defense Secretary James Mattis acknowledged Friday night
in a press conference that he hadn’t found evidence that the
Syrian government used chemical weapons until Friday afternoon,
hours after the ISO’s article appeared. In other words, the ISO
reached its guilty verdict before the Pentagon claims it reached
theirs.
Second, the pseudo-left groups criticize the bombing campaign on
the grounds that it does not go far enough and that more military
intervention is required.
Writing for the NPA, Daher expresses concern that “Donald Trump
has reiterated his wish to withdraw from Syria, in spite of
resistance among his closest advisors.” He notes that such a
retreat “is being encouraged by the principal powers intervening
in Syria: Russia, Iran and Turkey.” Here he excludes the United
States, which bears overwhelming responsibility for the mass
killing in Syria and destruction of the country's infrastructure.
Daher concludes by declaring that the “crimes of the Assad regime
continue with the silence and complicity of the international and
regional powers.” In an April 13 interview published on the
website of International Viewpoint, the magazine of the
Pabloite United Secretariat, Daher calls for the US to arm the
Syrian rebels: “We should also support the provision of weapons
and arms to these democratic forces in the region to combat both
counter-revolutionary forces.”
The ISO’s April 13 article criticizes the Obama administration
because it “denied rebels access to anti-aircraft or anti-tank
weaponry that would have given them a potentially decisive
advantage against the Syrian military, which could have led to the
fall of the regime altogether.” The article continues:
“From the beginning of the Arab Spring uprising in Syria, US
policy has been aimed at making sure some form of the current
regime continues in Syria, with or without Assad. As the regime’s
savage counterrevolution advanced, thanks to Russian military
might, the US has come to accept that Assad will stay, and the
Russians will be the powerbrokers in the country.”
Jacobin magazine, the journal supported by the DSA, has
not published a single recent article on the US threats against
Syria nor on the bombings themselves. While Jacobin
editor Bhaskar Sunkara remained silent about Trump’s threats to
bomb Syria in the days before the attack, he found time to publish
multiple tweets about the New York Knicks basketball team.
Jacobin’s silence denotes consent and complacency.
The same is true for the Australian pseudo-left organization
Socialist Alternative, which maintains close relations with the
ISO in the US, and International Viewpoint, the magazine
of the Pabloite, ex-Trotskyist United Secretariat. These groups
are nothing more than propaganda wings of American, British, and
French imperialism. They provide the intelligence agencies with a
megaphone, spouting their justifications for war and coloring them
with “left” sounding verbiage.
These groups are pro-war because they belong to a privileged
upper-middle class layer that stands to benefit materially from
the imperialist pillaging of the Middle East. Their pro-war
proclamations reflect the right-wing shift among sections of the
wealthiest 10 percent of American and European society, whose
stock portfolios have skyrocketed as a result of the
financialization of the world economy and the global stock market
boom.
Polls show massive opposition in the US, France, and the UK to
the Syria strikes. This reflects the growing opposition of the
working class to war, which takes place under conditions of a
growth of the class struggle worldwide as evidenced most acutely
in the three countries that launched Friday night’s strikes. The
pseudo-left and the imperialist powers fear that the struggles of
the working class will merge with broad antiwar sentiment among
workers and youth. The building of a mass movement in the working
class opposed to war and inequality will take place in a conscious
struggle against those groups that call themselves
“left” while helping the imperialist powers bomb and plunder the
former colonial countries.
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