 A murderous war against the Syrian people is being waged by an unholy alliance of foreign death squads and Syrian terrorists. These gangsters have no popular support, but get their funding from western imperialist states – either directly or via imperialism’s regional puppets in Turkey and the Gulf monarchies. Their truly barbaric and anti-people essence is revealed in their calls for a Nato air war against Syria’s civilian population.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, and the urgent need for British workers to organise to obstruct and sabotage this criminal war, many leaders in Britain’s anti-war movement have chosen to focus only on the threatened military attack on Iran, and to do so in a way that diverts attention away from the war now raging in Syria.
Instead of condemning imperialism’s mercenaries, these same leaders tell us that the motley assortment of ‘rebel’ groups that make up the ‘Free Syria Army’ are the cutting edge of a ‘working-class, progressive revolution against a dictatorship’ – thus falling straight into the trap that the imperialist-controlled media have set for us.
An imperialist autumn
For nearly two years now, a wall-to-wall deluge of imperialist propaganda has set out to confuse and disorientate British workers by cynically mixing up the genuinely popular progressive uprisings against imperialist-backed tyrannical dictatorships (as in Egypt, Tunisia and the Gulf monarchies) with that of the reactionary violence waged by western-backed fundamentalist and feudalist forces against popular anti-imperialist governments in the region. What the mainstream media hide from their readers is the simple truth that these throwbacks are fighting not to liberate their people from slavery but to try to bring back the slave-owners’ grip to the liberated zones.
Far from expressing the popular will, Nato’s murdering gangs are using the surge of anti-imperialist anger in the wider Arab world as a cover for a terroristic rampage that is aimed at helping to reinstate imperialist control over those few places where policy is not currently dictated in Washington, London or Paris. In Syria today, just as in Libya 2011, the terrorists are supported by a carefully-orchestrated campaign of unfounded media demonisation and unjustified military provocations against a legitimate, sovereign government.
The pattern is becoming painfully predictable: Nato organises its proxies to commit an atrocity against innocent civilians or defence forces, and then uses its control of mainstream media to set up an indignant howl, turning the story on its head and claiming that first the atrocity itself, and then all attempts by the security forces to catch those responsible and protect the people from further outrages, are proof that the ‘regime’ is ‘killing its own people’.
Using their disproportionate influence at the UN, imperialist powers then seek to disguise their real (and illegal) regime-changing intentions as altruistic concern for the local people. All of which opens the door to the ‘humanitarian’ delivery of savage saturation bombing aimed at totally destroying the country’s hard-won infrastructure, social welfare systems and independence.
Why Syria?
Syria’s government, like Iran’s, is guilty of the high crime of following anti-imperialist policies that seek to deliver economic and democratic gains to the Syrian, Arab and middle-eastern peoples. The imperialists, faced with the deepest ever economic and social crisis of capitalism, and with the prospect of losing some of their all-important footholds in the Middle East, want to grab both countries’ resources. They also want to destroy the dangerous examples of independence that those countries set – and to try to establish new territorial bases from which to carry on controlling the region.
Nato’s dictators want to install governments that will reverse progressive gains in Syria and Iran, such as free education and health care, nationalised oil and mineral wealth, and food and housing subsidies. Most importantly, they want to put an end to their independent and anti-imperialist foreign policies, particularly their principled refusal to compromise with Israeli zionism.
In Syria, they want to overturn a secular and inclusive state and replace the present national-unity government with a politics rooted in confessional divisions. In this way, they hope to break the unity of the Syrian workers and divert their energies into religious and ethnic conflicts.
Things are not going quite to the imperialist blueprint, however. In February 2012, over 15 million people endorsed a new constitution, while May’s election results gave a clear signal that the Syrian people support their government’s reform plan.
The steadfast unity and resistance of the mass of the Syrian people, supported by the diplomatic efforts of China and Russia at the UN, mean that the criminal conspiracy against Syria has so far been foiled – much to the frothing frustration of the western plotters, who are left casting about for fresh excuses to justify an unjustifiable war, while making outrageous demands that Syria’s leaders should step down.
After Syria comes Iran
In 2007, retired US general Wesley Clarke revealed details of a secret Pentagon ‘Redirection strategy’ document, which proposed using 9/11 to justify launching unprovoked wars (the highest international crime) on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iran and Lebanon – all countries seen as obstacles to US world domination and obstacles to the raking in of maximum profits by British and US corporations.
It is clear that if the Syrian government is toppled, the attacks against Iran will be escalated into a full war – and the inevitable endgame if the juggernaut is not stopped will be a catastrophic conflagration against Russia and China. Meanwhile, those who tell us to support the Syrian ‘opposition’ are blocking our ability to effectively mobilise and sabotage the war effort, which means objectively (whether or not they mean to) they are weakening not only Syria’s chances of survival but also Iran’s.
For imperialism, Syria is a stepping stone, a gateway to Iran. And so the best defence for Iran will naturally be a victory for the Syrian government. Which means the most urgent question for the British anti-war movement today is the defence of Syria.
Iran’s envoy, Saeed Jalili, says that Iran and Syria are part of an unbreakable “axis of resistance”. We workers in Britain need to join this ‘axis of resistance’ by refusing to cooperate with the criminal war against Syria. We must refuse to fight; refuse to make or transport arms and supplies; refuse to create or broadcast war propaganda that demonises Syria’s leaders and justifies the war. And we must give full support to the Syrian and Iranian governments in defending their people against imperialism.
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