By Jeff Mackler
[Editor’s note: We reprint here “The U.S. War on Syria,”a rejoinder to a spurious article that appeared in April 2021 in The Nation and Intercontinental Press, the later the online publication of the Fourth Intercontinental. Entitled, “Syria: How to Avoid the ‘Anti-Imperialism’ of Fools: The logic of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is a recipe for empty cynicism.”
My intention is to refute their blatantly false assertion that “America is not central to what has happened in Syria,” as well as their implication that a UN intervention would benefit the Syrian people. [See Part II, on this website, “News That Was “Fit to Print” a Decade Ago But Banned Today by the Corporate Media – New York Times” By Jeff Mackler]
Above all, however, it is to decry the fact that comrades who have long stood on revolutionary socialist internationalist principles find themselves today on the wrong side the barricades with regard to the imperialist intervention and war in Syria. Worse still, their views are presented on the pages of International Viewpoint, the online publication of the Fourth International, the world party founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. Some 50 parties the world over are affiliated with this once vibrant revolutionary socialist organization. I can only wonder whether they share the reactionary views of the leaders whose names are attached to their recent text.
Hence my selection of Shakespeare famous line from Julius Caesar, “the most unkindest cut of all,” referencing the participation of Brutus in Caesar’s stabbing murder. Here, my objective is not to understate the central and unmitigated horrors committed by U.S. imperialism in Syria or to its history of some 700 wars of murderous intervention, mass slaughter and conquest over the past century. These are a given – an inherent feature of the rapacious capitalist-imperialist system itself.
Rather, I chose the Shakespearian phrase to denote only a handful of virtual non-players in the political arena, but who were former friends and collaborators. One of whom, Gilbert Achcar, penned this vicious essay dated April 6, 2021,
Achcar is the originator of the article edited by Noam Chomsky and signed by some 300 Syrian expats and now, via the Change.org petition site, signed onto by the editor of The Nation. Achcar’s term “‘anti-imperialism’ of fools” appears in both texts, as does the abject rejection of the established facts demonstrating that the U.S. plays the critical role in Syria’s decimation.
Both the Chomsky-signed statement that appeared in New Politics, Al-Jumhuriya and subsequently on other small websites, and Ashcar’s essay in The Nation lend direct or indirect support to the infamous UN resolution on Libya that paved the way for the U.S./NATO devastation of that nation in the name of protecting some 50,000 Libyans in Benghazi from an alleged impending massacre by the forces of Libyan president Moammar Gadhafi. Achcar writes, “Yet, in the absence of alternative means of preventing the impending massacre, the NFZ [No Fly Zone] could hardly be opposed in its initial phase—for the same reasons that had led Moscow and Beijing to abstain.”
Achcar neglects to report that this claimed impending massacre, as with the George W. Bush administration’s canard, “weapons of mass destruction,” pretext for the U.S. war on Iraq, proved to be yet another U.S. fabrication. Indeed, a leading British military intelligence agency has amply demonstrated that there never was any such threat posed by the Libyan government. Yet Libya was devastated – bombarded into oblivion and reduced to the “failed state” that it has become, with forces beholden to the U.S. and others fighting over control of that nation’s vast oil resources. Russia and China’s UN Security Council “abstentions” paved the way to the U.S.-led slaughter in Libya. These abstentions were equally criminal acts. Both these lesser imperialist capitalist regimes of Stalinist origin today seek, within limits, “peaceful co-existence” with a U.S. imperialism that surrounds them with countless military bases and threats of war. With regard to Syria, or Venezuela, however, where for their own reasons they accepted the invitations of these U.S. imperialist beleaguered nations for critical aid to survive, they cannot be faulted. Any political equation that concludes with the proposition that U.S. imperialism and Russia’s and China’s must in all matters be equally condemned regardless of the facts at hand, is fundamentally flawed. Condemning Russia and China, for example, for providing humanitarian aid to Venezuela in the context the U.S.-instigated military coup, blockade and embargo of Venezuela, is sheer nonsense.
Achcar, who supported the UN intervention in Libya, and the anti-Assad “rebels,” backed to the hilt by U.S. imperialism, beseeches us to reject the aphorism, “the enemy of my enemy (the USA) is my friend” (or someone I should spare from criticism at any rate).” His argument is that we should not befriend Assad just because he is the enemy of U.S. imperialism. We should not, he argues, befriend Russia, China, or Iran or Hezbollah, or Saddam Hussein and others, just because they are/were enemies of U.S. imperialism. To do so, argues Achcar, would transform us to the status of reviled “campists,” who automatically defend everyone who opposes the U.S.
Here Achcar’s repeats the false accusations that his “Erasing people through disinformation” diatribe attributes to all those antiwar and social justice coalitions who demand U.S. Out Now! and U.S. Hands Off Syria! That is, that they are Assad or Russian or China or Saddam Hussein, etc. supporters.
Again, none of these coalitions took any position on the nature of the governments that defended Syria at Syria’s request or the governments of other nations that have been victims of U.S. imperialist wars. They did defend beleaguered Syria’s right to self-determination, to be free from U.S.-led wars of conquest and mass destruction, their varying motives notwithstanding. Unlike Achcar, they also rejected UN intervention as they did the spurious assertion that “America was not central” to the U.S. war against the Syrian people. [For the past decade, Socialist Action has documented in the greatest detail the horrors of the U.S. war against Syria. In this regard, we urge interested activists to read our on line pamphlet Syria: Anatomy of Another U.S. Imperialist War by Jeff Mackler].
A final note here is required of my conscience and political integrity. The published statement that polemicizes against the anti-war movement is also tragically signed by a number of important leaders of the Fourth International, including the editor of its publication, International Viewpoint. This represents yet another fundamental departure from the socialist program and principles that have guided the Fourth International since its formation by Leon Trotsky in 1938. Trotsky, co-leader with Vladimir Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution, murdered in August 1940 at the hands of a Stalinist agent, maintained the finest traditions of Marxism and socialist revolution. These included categorical opposition to imperialist war and unconditional support to the right of oppressed nations to self-determination.
That some comrades in the Fourth International, to which my party, Socialist Action, remains fraternally and very critically affiliated, have departed from this stance deeply saddens me as does their association and deference to the likes of Professor Gilbert Achcar, who today stands on the opposite side of the working-class barricades that separate us from the imperialist beast.
Which side are you on?
Here, some stark conclusions are in order. Antiwar activists and revolutionary socialists alike cannot be neutral on matters of imperialist wars against poor and oppressed nations. In demanding U.S. Out Now! we reject any and all “justifications,” not to mention invented pretexts, for such wars. In supporting Syria’s right to be free from this U.S.-orchestrated war, we stand in solidarity with the Syrian people, regardless of our assessment of the Assad government. We do take sides! We are for the defeat of the U.S. intervening warmakers, for their immediate and unconditional withdrawal. Were we in Syria, our position would be the same. Without lending an iota of political support to the capitalist Assad government, we are advocates of the military defeat of the U.S. and its allied invaders.
U.S. Hands Off Syria! Out Now!