‘Civil war’ is a totally inaccurate label for what’s going on in Syria. I think we should start calling it what it is: an imperialist war of destabilisation, where the aggressors’ fighting has been outsourced to sectarian religious terrorists. This outsourcing follows the same logic as any other type of outsourcing: it’s cheaper. The political and economic cost of pushing thousands of Iraqi, Libyan and Saudi (etc) terrorists in Syria’s direction is extremely low, at least in the short term. Imagine if it was European and North American soldiers coming home in body bags - there might actually be a viable anti-war movement in the west! And people the world over would know exactly who was to blame for the shameful destruction of a beautiful nation - for the needless deaths of thousands, for the forced migration of hundreds of thousands, for the reversal of decades of progress, for the brutal attack on thousands of years of civilisation.

And of course the ‘civil war’ narrative has another very important function: it contributes to our general prejudice that “these Arabs” (much like “these Africans” and “these Asians”) are inherently barbaric people who simply can’t get along. And it sends out a message that any attempt by a third world nation to follow a path of resistance to imperialism and zionism will inevitably end in murderous in-fighting - for which the civilised, sophisticated, modern imperialist states of course cannot reasonably be blamed.

So to call it a civil war is to take part in a vast deception.

What do I think of Seumas Milne’s latest article on Syria? Funny you should ask.

On the one hand, it is probably the best article on Syria you’ll see in the mainstream press. Unlike most other journalists, Seumas strongly condemns the illegal aerial attacks by Israel, and recognises that it is an intervention on the side of the ‘rebels’ (contras is a better term, for those that remember Nicaragua). Further, he accepts that the situation is now a “vicious sectarian war, manipulated by outside forces to change the regional balance of power”. If we ignore the slightly strange idea that Cameron is backing the rebellion in order to “ingratiate himself with the Gulf dictators” (a bit like a slavemaster ingratiating himself with his overseers), it is essentially a solid representation of what imperialism is up to in Syria.

This is all increasingly well understood by the left (some understood it two years ago, but hey, let’s not sweat the small stuff). But how should it affect the political position of anti-imperialists? If it is an imperialist war (what else is it, if it is “manipulated by outside forces to change the regional balance of power”?), then isn’t it quite obvious that we should actively take the side that is under attack from the imperialists and their henchmen? That is to say: we should support the Syrian patriotic front, led by the Syrian government. Yup, that’s right. Even if Syria doesn’t correspond to our own special definition of democracy; even if Syrian prisons are extremely unpleasant places; even if, with our ever-so-refined political culture, we don’t think Hafez al-Assad’s son should have become President; even if we think Syria should really have defeated one of the best-equipped armies in the world (Israel) by now; etc etc. Put as many ‘even ifs’ in as you like, but you can’t escape the inescapable: anti-imperialists should support Syria against imperialist destabilisation, slander and regime change. Chávez was a big supporter of Syria - damn it, be more like Chávez!

And that is exactly where Seumas’ article falls down. Instead of encouraging unity against the main enemy, he says that “the Assad regime bears responsibility” for it all, and that the situation started because of the “brutal repression” of a “popular uprising”. No supporting evidence, of course - by now, the early stories spread by phoney ‘news’ organisations such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have become accepted truth and there is no longer any burden of evidence. And can we please stop using the word ‘regime’, which implies a blind acceptance of the mainstream narrative on democracy (if nothing else, we can say that Assad has infinitely more support and legitimacy than David Cameron).

Seumas’ regurgitation of the neither-Assad-nor-imperialism line leaves his article being little better than the usual demobilising, misleading rubbish that the SWP and others have been coming out with for the past two years. It doesn’t promote unity; it doesn’t mobilise people; it just spreads defeatism. For goodness sake, if Israel is bombing Damascus and the contras are being supplied with weapons and money by the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, then it should be pretty bloody obvious which side to take!

End of rant.

So, according to the Washington Post, the “Obama administration is moving toward a major policy shift on Syria that could provide rebels there with equipment such as body armor and armored vehicles, and possibly military training, and could send humanitarian assistance directly to Syria’s opposition political coalition.” The article doesn’t mention that the US and Britain are already assisting the rebels with money, in addition to authorising the supply of weapons via Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

One question: Why are Britain and the US so focused on assisting the Syrian revolution? I thought imperialists weren’t usually such big fans of the whole revolution thing. Do you know how much finance, weaponry and training was supplied by the western powers to the liberation movements in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya, Nicaragua and elsewhere? Or how much is currently supplied to Hezbollah, FARC and the revolutionary movements in Bahrain and Saudi?

I think you can probably guess the exact figures…

“The rebel Free Syrian Army on Wednesday threatened to shell positions of the powerful Hezbollah militant group in neighbouring Lebanon after accusing it of firing across the border into territory it controls.”

As you’ll have noticed, I have a certain amount of sympathy for the Syrian state. They’ve made plenty of mistakes, and IMHO suffer from having a rather narrow vision and over-cautious strategy, but essentially they have worked to build a decent, dignified, educated and resistant nation, in exceptionally difficult circumstances.

Hezbollah on the other hand deserves an entirely different level of support. It is the only movement that has defeated Israel in the latter’s expansionist wars, and it represents the brightest hope of the people of Palestine and the wider Arab world for a just peace.

So when the Syrian opposition army - the ‘Free Syrian Army’ - threatens to shell Hezbollah, you have a pretty clear indication of where their loyalties lie. Hence I contend that support for the Syrian revolution is tantamount to support for Israeli expansionism and an attack on the Palestinian national project.

Irony alert! The Syrian rebels, who are allowing themselves to be used as footsoldiers in a game designed to massively bolster Israeli interests, accuse the Ba’ath government of never standing up to Israel.

Kamal Labwani, Syrian National Coalition official, says:

“Assad never once in his life stood up to Israel. All he ever did is ‘reserve the right to retaliate’ but he never retaliated against anyone other than the Syrian people and the Free Syrian Army.”

This is a discussion that comes up from time to time. Syria never did anything against Israel. Well, it hasn’t managed to defeat zionism; that’s true. Syria always thought, correctly, that Israel - armed to the hilt by the US - would defeat it in direct war, and therefore focused on building a resistant front. The last iteration of that front was destroyed by disunity, disruption and sellouts (principally in the form of erstwhile Egyptian president Anwar Sadat). The current iteration of that resistant front is now under serious threat of destruction from pro-west counter-revolutions parading as the ‘Arab Spring’.

That said, Syria has of course consistently funded and armed Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad; has refused to divorce its own interests from those of the Palestinians (ie no deal on Golan without a deal on the West Bank); and has been a driving force behind the few victories that have been scored against the zionist entity. Very different from the likes of Saudi, Egypt, Jordan etc, who have actively cooperated with Israel for their own opportunist short-term interests.

Just thought we should clear that up.

“Assad has already carried out air strikes and military assaults on working class areas where the opposition to his brutal regime is rooted.” - Socialist Worker, 15 December.

There’s a lot of meaning in that short sentence, which may not be immediately obvious to the untrained eye.

1. We accept the various “unverified reports” and “anonymous footage” that the Syrian air force is attacking civilians (and therefore we lend tacit support to the idea of a no-fly-zone, or at least contribute to the general feeling that something-needs-to-be-done and surely-we-have-a-responsibility-to-protect).

2. The Syrian state is anti-worker. And, as we all know, working class people are more important than anyone else, always, all over the world. So in the global class struggle of workers versus bosses, we (the SWP) represent the heroic international working class, and they (the Syrian state) represent the moribund capitalist oligarchy.

3. The Syrian opposition is rooted in the working class. It is a working class revolution. A socialist revolution. The future. It has nothing to do with the West or its Gulf proxies. It is not dominated by religious sectarian elements.

4. The Syrian government is not a ‘government’. The UK, the US, France, Germany - these are countries that have ‘governments’. Democracy. Legitimacy. White men. The rule of law. Syria has a ‘regime’. No democracy, no legitimacy, just brutality.

This is the sort of pernicious radical-sounding nonsense you end up with when you’ve read just a little bit of Marx (definitely not his later work on Ireland!) but haven’t got the faintest clue about class struggle in the era of imperialism.

I was glad to see a decent number of people in Britain at least willing to demonstrate and occupy in solidarity with Gaza. It doesn’t do as much as a Fajr rocket, but it does something, and something is better than nothing.

The obvious question is: why don’t we show as much support to Syria? Is it not also suffering? Is it not potentially facing destruction of Iraqi proportions? Are ordinary Syrians not being killed, or living in fear, or losing loved ones, or watching the wanton destruction of their civilisation and livelihoods by thugs acting as proxies for big-power interests?

The central purpose of Israel’s attack on Gaza was to wipe out guerilla resistance to zionism and imperialism. The central purpose of the coordinated France-UK-US-Saudi-Qatar-Turkey attack on Syria is to wipe out stable-state resistance to zionism and imperialism. Similar phenomena, so why the solidarity disparity?

It’s a complicated question. You could argue that Israel/Palestine is a far more clear-cut case of colonial occupation and anti-colonial resistance. I don’t deny that, but I don’t think it’s the crucial factor here. If you look at the history of the international solidarity movement in the ‘west’, you see that it usually develops momentum when it is able to get the support of a section of the ruling class. For example, the Iraq war was opposed by a significant minority in the ruling circles; the liberal press by and large came out in opposition to the war; and two million marched in London. The apartheid system in South Africa was a serious embarrassment for a world capitalist system that was trying to improve its image; the liberal press was generally supportive of anti-apartheid sentiments; and the international movement against apartheid was quite strong.

It seems to me that the more thoughtful mainstream politicians in the west do not favour the nutty hardcore right-wing Netanyahu-Lieberman strategy and would rather Israel move towards some stability via the negotiated two-state solution route. Therefore the Guardian and the Independent have been willing to print quite a few articles opposing Israel’s barbaric onslaught. A pro-Palestinian position is certainly a minority within the mainstream, but it is at least visible and available. At this moment in time, one can support Palestine without being a total outcast, hated at all ends of the political spectrum. But to support Syria against an imperialist-funded proxy war; to support Libya or Yugoslavia against disgusting cowardly NATO bombardment; to support Zimbabwe’s return of farmland to black farmers; to support Irish Republicans when they took their fight to the belly of the beast; this is to render yourself an outcast, holding a position that is totally unacceptable to the power structure. It is the equivalent of opposing the slave trade in the 17th century. It is the equivalent of opposing British genocide in India in the 19th century. It is the equivalent of supporting China in the Opium Wars. It is the equivalent of supporting the Haitian Revolution, or the Nat Turner uprising.

You gotta have a thick skin.

The defence of Syria is, at this point in time, the frontline of the struggle worldwide against imperialist domination. It is Korea in 1950, Vietnam in 1965, Algeria in 1954, Zimbabwe in 1970, Cuba in 1961, Nicaragua in 1980, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Palestine since 1948.

Imperialist domination is the fundamental problem of the modern era; it is the thing that gets in the way of people developing freely and peacefully, creatively solving their problems without interference.

How different of a place would Syria be if it didn’t have to defend itself against imperialism (particularly in its zionist form)? How different of a place would Iraq be if it hadn’t been bombed into the stone age? How different of a place would Cuba be if it hadn’t suffered from a half-century embargo and endless economic and political destabilisation? How different of a place would China be if it wasn’t facing an encirclement strategy? How different of a place would Latin America be if it hadn’t been subjected to yankee-imposed dictatorships and neoliberal experimentation for decades? How different of a place would Africa be if it didn’t bear the brunt of neocolonialism and structurally enforced underdevelopment? How different would the ghettos of the west be if it weren’t for the constant economic, political and cultural warfare that is employed against them?

This is the defining political dynamic of the modern era. No room on the fence. Pick a side.

The following is the (rough) transcription of a speech I made introducing the ‘Defend Syria’ event recently held in London.

Hasn’t the anti-war movement done enough?

Why have this meeting? There have been a few other events opposing war in Syria, including a couple organised by the Stop the War Coalition, so is it really worth having this one? Is there anything left to say, other than to repeat: we don’t want the British military to bomb Syria? I personally think there are some important aspects of the Syria crisis that haven’t been properly covered and that we should look into if we’re serious about building a movement against war in Syria.

Don’t attack Syria?

For one thing, we shouldn’t be saying “please don’t attack Syria”; we should be saying “stop attacking Syria”. Because there is already a war taking place in Syria, one that Britain, France and the US are deeply involved in. Although it is painted in the media as a purely internal Syrian conflict, when you look under the surface there are a lot of external forces backing, promoting, advising and arming the opposition.

Crux of the conflict

The crux of this conflict, which hardly anyone in the west seems to have understood or is talking about, is a fairly typical modern neo-colonial war. We’ve seen a very similar pattern in Libya, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Yugoslavia in the 90s, in Grenada and Nicaragua in the 80s, in Chile in the 70s. The western imperialist powers stir up unrest, they destabilise, they demonise, they propagandise, they exploit divisions - for example religious and ethnic divisions - and manipulate situations in order to support their overall geopolitical game-plan; that is: wiping out all resistance to imperialism and to zionism. If we haven’t learnt to recognise this pattern yet, well, we’re not very good learners!

There’s nothing all that new happening in Syria, in the sense that it’s a conflict which is basically ongoing: Syria’s Arab nationalist and Arab socialist orientation has never been acceptable to the west and to Israel. The conflict has been steadily escalating over the last decade, especially since the government’s refusal to go along with western plans for Iraq in 2003; especially since Hezbollah’s historic 2006 victory over Israel in Lebanon (which would doubtful have been achievable without Syrian support); and especially since 2005, when the US started channeling significant funding towards opposition groups, as has been exposed by Wikileaks. And it’s now got to a level where all the western imperialist governments and their Gulf state puppets are openly demanding, supporting, funding regime change. Furthermore, they’re imposing suffocating sanctions - designed to make the government unpopular by making the people suffer - and they’re pushing this endless propaganda; the full mass media machine has been put to work to demonise Syria, creating a growing public sentiment that “something must be done” to get rid of the evil tyrant Bashar al-Assad.

Anti-imperialist position

So I think it’s very important to be clear: there is a neo-colonial war taking place. Imperialism and zionism stand on one side; the independent, resistant Syrian nation stands on the other. Yes, there are nuances and complexities within that; there are other contradictions (for example between the Syrian unemployed and the bureaucracy), but these are subsidiary to the principal contradiction.

If people call themselves anti-imperialist, they’ve got a responsibility to stand firmly and unambiguously on Syria’s side. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have differences with, or reservations about, the Syrian state; that’s fine (although I have to say, people’s critique of the Syrian state tends to be informed more by mainstream media disinformation than by serious historical/political analysis). But people cannot sit on the fence in a situation such as this.

Let’s be honest: the anti-war activity in relation to Syria so far in Britain (and in the west generally) has been pretty pathetic and certainly very ineffective, in the sense that it hasn’t impacted public opinion at all. And the problem is that people are trying to build an anti-war movement on the basis of an argument that says: yes, the Syrian state is dreadful in every way, and we support the uprising against it, we want regime change, but we don’t want the west to interfere. Nobody is going to put themselves on the line to prevent a war on that basis; nobody is going to be forming teams of human shields; nobody is going to send off international brigades to defend a state that they’ve been told is not worthy of defence.

Another Iraq

And while people are squirming this way and that to protect their “ideological purity”, Syria is actually in the crosshairs; it is actually under attack. There is a very real threat that it will be turned into “another Iraq”. It’s awful to use that expression about an important and historic country like Iraq - one of the birthplaces of civilisation - but the fact is we can’t think of Iraq these days without thinking about over a million surplus deaths since the start of the 2003 war; without thinking about millions of refugees; without thinking of depleted uranium poisoning; without thinking about Fallujah, Najaf, Abu Ghraib; without thinking of deadly sectarian violence; without thinking of half a million children killed by sanctions between 1991 and 2003; without thinking of a proud nation - a leading Third World nation - being reduced to the status of a failed state.

Repression

This is what Syria is potentially facing. So what makes it so difficult to defend Syria? What’s so bad about the Syrian state that we can’t side with it?

One reason a lot of people cite is that it’s repressive. Well ok, yes, to some degree, it’s repressive - as are all states. This is the nature of the state. Every state in the world has a police force, an army, a secret police. Every state in the world has prisons - which means that every state in the world engages in what I would consider to be a pretty disgusting and inhumane act of repression. But such is the nature of the state.

Is Syria more repressive than most? Maybe. But why would that be the case? It’s not enough to say Syria is repressive and therefore bad and that’s the end of it. That’s a very shallow analysis. It’s not possible to properly understand a phenomenon without considering it fully in its historical context. Repression serves different functions in different contexts.

The United States, for example, has two and a quarter million people in prison, approximately half of whom are black. It has the highest incarceration rate in the world, 12 times higher than Syria’s. The purpose of this appalling repression is quite clear: to prevent the possibility of black, brown, indigenous and working class people from developing power and from challenging the interests of the racist, imperialist power structure.

If you look at the list of countries with the highest military expenditure as a percentage of GDP (that is, relative to their economy, how much do the spend on weaponry), you’ll see Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan at the top. What do these countries need all those weapons for?! They’re not at war. They’re not under threat from Britain, France and the United States. They’re on good terms with Israel. So what are the weapons for? They exist as a deterrent force to their populations, whose needs are totally at odds with those of their ruling families. The masses of those countries hate their governments for their religious sectarianism, for their allegiance to the west, for their selling out of Palestine. Hence the need for repression.

But Syria is a different case: it is an anti-west state; it is a defender of Palestinian rights; it has made massive sacrifices in order to not sell out the Palestinian and Arab national cause; and it is a secular state, deeply hostile to religious sectarianism. So what makes the Syrian state repressive? Is it perhaps some sort of inherited personality characteristic in the Assad family that drives its members to behave in an authoritarian manner? (Probably there are genetic scientists in the west piecing together just such a theory!). Or is it simply the fact that it has never known peace; the fact that other countries - mainly Israel, but also France, the US, Britain, Jordan, Saudi, Iraq at various times, Egypt at various times, Turkey at various times - have been working to destabilise it, to stir up sectarian conflict; that is, to do anything to remove it from its position as the leading resistant Arab state.

Sacrifices for stability and resistance

It’s clear that, in the face of this non-stop threat, Syria has made compromises of all sorts - especially in relation to democratic forms and socialist economics - in order to achieve some level of stability and to maintain its resistant stance. Who am I to say that is a bad choice? Who am I to tell anybody that increasing the breadth of popular democratic organisations is more important than basic political and economic stability? Ask any Somali which one of those things their country needs more at this point in time. I bet I know the answer.

That’s not to say that changes aren’t needed in Syria - Syrian people do want change, as does the Syrian President. But reform is a complex process, made much more difficult by the type of threat that Syria is facing.

If we’re serious about building an anti-war movement, let’s not get too caught up in wanting to make judgements against the Syrian state for this or that mistake or defect. When Syria is under attack, a better instinct is help people understand the positive aspects of its character, the reasons it’s under attack from the global enemy, rather than going into the ritual denunciation that most anti-war activists seem to be into. Furthermore, we should be doing a lot more to promote Syrian voices, to give voice to those millions of Syrians who defend their country and who perfectly well understand the conspiracy that’s taking place. So far their voice has been totally ignored, not only by the mainstream media, but also by most of the ‘alternative’ and left-wing press.

The following article is based on a speech I gave at Brunel University at the invitation of the Brunel Socialist and Progressive Society.

There is currently a very serious threat of war against Iran and Syria. Algeria, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe and elsewhere are also on the ‘hit list’. The key issue for the anti-war movement in the west is, obviously, what can we do to prevent wars of imperialist aggression taking place?

With that question in mind, we need to review the recent history of an African nation that goes by the name of Libya - until quite recently known as the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. In March last year, the United Nations Security Council established a “no fly zone” - which it turns out is ruling class slang for “brutal war of aggression” - ostensibly to prevent the Libyan government from killing unarmed protestors. A year later, I believe it is fair to say that the results of that war have been nothing short of tragic.

Disaster in Libya

It was supposedly a war to save lives, and yet the most reliable estimate we have to date says that 50,000 people have died that wouldn’t otherwise have died. And don’t forget Libya’s population is only 6 million. In Britain, with a population of around 60 million, the proportional number of deaths would be half a million.

Tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned and tortured by militias associated with the ruling National Transitional Council - “the rebels”. The people we were told were the “good guys”. And I’m not inventing scare stories - this has all been has been widely documented.

Over the course of the year - and reports of this started to emerge as early as February 2011, before the ‘no fly zone’ was even being discussed - Libya has witnessed widespread lynching and torture of black Libyans and sub-Saharan migrant workers, who have been targeted because of the colour of their skin. We’ve seen the videos of so-called ‘rebels’ caging black Africans like animals in a zoo, force feeding them cotton flags. We’ve seen reports of black Libyans being forced to climb up a pole shouting ‘Monkey need banana’. In 2011! Arab supremacists and militant religious sectarians, wholly supported by the western intelligence agencies and the reactionary feudal monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, lynching black Libyans whilst claiming to be fighting for ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’. In 2011! If this were happening in Mississippi, everyone would be shouting about it, and yet it’s barely reported.

The war has created an estimated 700,000 refugees - over 10% of the population.

So much of Libya’s infrastructure has been destroyed, experts who know the country well have described it having been “bombed into the stone age”. Libya is a technically advanced country. The Great Man-Made River, for example, is considered as an amazing feat of engineering - it’s the largest underground network of pipes and aqueducts in the world, tapping into water underneath the Sahara and using it to irrigate farms and supply drinking water. So NATO bombed it. To prevent the killing of unarmed protestors, presumably.

There is an on-going civil war. And there is the very real threat of the country being balkanised, with the oil-rich east becoming a nice, small, manageable little statelet totally subservient to the whims of the western ruling classes.

Shock doctrine

Important gains in social welfare, education, housing, women’s rights are in the process of being reversed, as an inevitable outcome of the “shock therapy” that Libya has been, and is being, subjected to. I’m sure many of you have read Naomi Klein’s book ‘The Shock Doctrine’, where she discusses how natural disasters, wars, coups, famines - any kind of large-scale ‘shock’ - have been used by the free market fundamentalists to implement their neoliberal policies. This is what happened in Chile in the wake of the Pinochet coup. This is what happened in Iraq in the aftermath of the war.

Chile in the era before the coup - when it was led by the progressive, socialist-oriented government of Salvador Allende - had a strong emphasis on social welfare programmes, nationalisation, limits to foreign investment, limited engagement with the global markets, high level of spending on education, and so on. The CIA-backed coup opened the way for all that to be reversed, for the economy to be fully opened up to foreign investment and the global market, for privatisation, for the dismantling of the welfare system. The result was of course a massive polarisation of wealth - the creation of a handful of incredibly rich people acting on behalf of western corporate interests, and the terrible impoverishment of vast masses of people at the bottom of the economic heap.

Iraq is a similar story. Oil accounts for well over 70% of Iraq’s economy. In 1972, the property of the multinational oil companies was confiscated and the oil was nationalised in order that oil profits would remain in Iraq and could be used to support the various social welfare projects that were considered to be the best in the Middle East (the campaign to eradicate illiteracy even won Saddam Hussein a UNESCO prize!). The US and British occupiers made sure all that came to an end. In 2008, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total came back to Iraq to claim what they consider to be their birth-right - Iraq’s vast oil reserves.

Libya had the highest Human Development Index of any country in Africa. It had the lowest infant mortality rate in Africa. The highest literacy rate in Africa. The highest life expectancy in Africa. Free, universal education and healthcare. Subsidised fuel and housing. And this in a country which, 60 years ago, was one of the poorest countries in the world. Whatever your view of Muammar Qaddafi or the record of the Libyan Jamahiriya, these are facts that are not disputed. And, just like in Chile, and just like in Iraq, Libya also had very tight restrictions on foreign investment. And it is perfectly obvious that all this will be broken up, the shock doctrine will be applied - and indeed is being applied - and the quality of life for the average Libyan will continue in free-fall for a long time.

And the repercussions will extend beyond Libya. Another major goal of the war against Libya was to cut it out of the resistant Global South in general, and out of an emerging Africa in particular. To put an end to its leadership of the African Union; to put an end to its role in developing the Africa Investment Bank; to put an end to its role in developing the single African currency; to put an end to its role in supporting anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements. Some people forget that Libya was a major supporter of the ANC and PAC in South Africa, SWAPO in Namibia, MPLA in Angola, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the PLO, the American Indian Movement, and more.

So you can see from looking at imperialist intervention in Chile, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere that there’s a clear pattern. And guess what: Iran also has a highly developed welfare system, a tendency towards nationalisation, restrictions on foreign investment, prioritisation of education, prioritisation of healthcare, fuel subsidies, a record of support for resistance movements such as Hezballah and Hamas, and so on. Oh, and so does Syria. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what the corporate vultures and geostrategists of North America and Western Europe have in mind for these countries.

Moving beyond the demonisation campaigns

Too many of us weren’t able to predict what would happen in Libya if the government fell. If we’re honest, we should have seen it coming. After all, Iraq is a very clear parallel, and that is still in recent memory - the Iraq war started in 2003, nine years ago.

So one aspect of defending Iran and Syria from imperialist war and interference is to have a clear understanding of what is likely to happen if their governments are defeated. Will these governments be replaced by more progressive forces? Will the people’s lives improve? Or is the western empire positioned to impose its own will? What is the reality of political power on the ground? These are questions that people need to ask. Otherwise, we are reduced to a very naive, very childish narrative. Iran is bad. Syria is bad. Iraq was bad. Libya was bad. Ahmadinejad - bad. Assad - bad. Saddam - bad. Qaddafi - bad. And since we have defined these political movements and personalities as being absolutely bad, then we have to conclude that anything is better. This is the precise purpose of the demonisation and slander campaigns - to make us unquestioningly support any alternative to the status quo. And even if we are peace-loving people who oppose war and don’t like bombs, we’re inevitably a bit weak, lacklustre, ambivalent in our opposition to war when we feel that the outcome of war will at least include getting rid of something that was absolutely bad, absolutely evil.

Just look at Iraq: a sectarian civil war, a million dead, several million displaced, depleted uranium poisoning, the destruction of the national infrastructure, the sell-off of the economy, the collapse of the education and healthcare systems, the huge rise in infant mortality. And yet there’s still this sentiment around even progressive circles in the west that, well, anything is better than Saddam. And it turns out that anything is not better than Saddam; that, for all its faults, Iraq under Ba’athist rule was a hundred times better off than it is today.

A responsibility to develop our understanding

A related point here is that we need to be much more clued up than we are. Ignorant humanitarians are so easily manipulated. We need a decent base level of understanding about the situations in Iran and Syria now. Part of the problem with the Libya situation was that nobody knew a bloody thing about Libya, and therefore we were so open to being manipulated by the emotional pleas and sophisticated lies of the media. There were stories about using “African mercenaries”. There were stories of using “rape as a weapon of war”. There were stories about “slaughter from the air”. Most people swallowed this nonsense because their understanding was based purely on the mainstream narrative. Don’t be caught out like that! Study Iran, study Syria; seek out different perspectives; build a decent base of understanding that you can use to filter the nonsense that comes flying at all of us every day via the global mass media. If more people don’t do this, if more people aren’t ready to actively counter the disinformation campaigns, frankly we have no hope of developing an effective anti-war strategy.

Be a voice of the voiceless

The other thing we need to do, which many feel uncomfortable with, is give a voice to the people and countries under attack. With Libya, there was a total blackout on pro-Libyan voices, combined with blind support for the Benghazi opposition, whose links with the CIA and reactionary social base were definitely a taboo, not to be mentioned at any cost. Outside Russia Today, the media completely ignored those within and outside Libya who supported the Libyan state. And shamefully, the left-wing and supposedly anti-war media contributed to this blackout.

Present the whole picture

There was complete silence in relation to positive characteristics of Libya under Qaddafi. There was complete silence in relation to positive characteristics of Iraq under Saddam. These days there is complete silence in relation to positive characteristics of Iran and Syria. I can understand this silence coming from the imperialist press, which has a very clear agenda, but it’s an extraordinary contradiction coming from supposedly progressive, radical, left forces. It’s like people consider themselves Marxists but haven’t understood even the most basic elements of Marxist philosphy - for example, that all phenomena have both positive and negative characteristics, and that nothing can be properly understood without thoroughly assessing both its positive and negative aspects.

How many leftists dared to suggest that perhaps Libya was worth defending on the basis of its exceptionally high level of social welfare? Or on the basis of its role in promoting African unity? Not many.

As anti-war activists, it is crucial that we reflect on all this. Because the non-stop negativity about these countries and movements in the crosshairs of imperialism prevents us from building up a mass anti-war sentiment. Even among people who are anti-war, we end up with a feeling that “ok, we’re opposed to NATO bombing, but we’re not actually motivated to do anything to prevent it.”

Playground politics

To use an analogy from the school playground: Let’s say Andy wants to beat up Ravi. We don’t like Andy, because he’s the neighbourhood bully. So the natural thing for us to do is to come to Ravi’s defence. But if all we have heard about Ravi is that he is not a good guy, then we’re not motivated to do anything for him, and Andy gets away with his bullying. Andy’s spread all these rumours about Ravi, and these made us forget that, even if Ravi is far from being an angel, he did actually help defend some other kids when Andy was bullying them, so the least we can do now is close ranks with Ravi against the neighbourhood bully.

We have to learn to recognise that propaganda war is a step towards military war. We can’t join in with the propaganda war and then say that we oppose military war. That simply doesn’t make sense!

Promote peaceful solutions

The other thing we can do is promote peaceful solutions that respect the sovereignty and wishes of the countries under attack. Regarding Libya, the African Union made important and useful proposals in terms of bringing about a peaceful negotiated settlement between the different sides of the crisis. Hugo Chavez and others made similar offers. These were ignored by the western warmongers, and they were also ignored by most of us. In Syria, the government made a significant concession in the form of a whole new constitution - read both the old and the new constitutions and you’ll see that the differences are far from trivial. It’s obviously meant as a peace offering of sorts, but it has been dismissed by the western warmongers, and again, it also gets dismissed by western leftists who claim to stand for peace! So we are left with the idea that Assad is a demon, Qaddafi is a demon, Ahmadinejad is a demon, and there is nothing they can do that will promote peace; ie, regime change is needed; ie, oh dear, we’re on the same side as Hillary Clinton and William Hague!

Understanding the meaning of unity

My final point is that we need to get our heads around the concept of unity and what it really means. It doesn’t mean coordinating action with all those people who have exactly the same ideas as you. On the contrary, it means putting certain differences aside in the pursuit of common goals. This is something that actual anti-imperialist leaders on the ground understand much better than we do. From an ideological point of view, there are huge differences between, say, Hugo Chavez - a socialist President of a liberal democracy; Fidel Castro - a communist of the old guard; and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - a radical Islamist and Iranian nationalist. And yet they have a strong sense of unity that is built on a framework of anti-imperialism and mutual support.

The biggest enemy - the real enemy in the world - is imperialism. The ruling classes of Western Europe and North America. “The Empire”, if you will. The task of defeating this empire requires a very broad-based unity. Sometimes that means coming to terms with differences that seem very great and concerns that seem very serious. This is especially true when we’re talking about developing unity with large, established movements - and states - that wield actual political power and that are involved in actual physical struggles against imperialism and zionism. In such cases we really have to learn to lose our sense of purism and be ready to deal with stuff that looks pretty ugly to our pampered western eyes. Given that we haven’t ourselves built an effective movement against imperialism, we must at least recognise that this process of building an effective movement against imperialism, or building an independent, pro-poor, non-aligned nation, is an incredibly difficult task in the context of global imperialist domination. Frankly, it cannot be achieved without painful compromises and, dare I say it, a certain amount of political repression of one’s enemies.

For example, Palestinians caught collaborating with Mossad have traditionally been treated very harshly. Collaborators with the security services in apartheid South Africa were not exactly treated with kid gloves by the liberation movement there. When the alternative is to allow people to sabotage and destroy your liberation movement, choices are limited. Global imperialist domination forces compromise and repression on revolutionary movements and on independent countries that refuse to go along with its rule. The compromises and the repression are symptoms of the problem; not causes. The cause is imperialist domination. Every country in the world would be run in a very different way if it weren’t for the concentration of political, economic, military and cultural power in the hands of the western imperialist power structure.

So this has to be our focus if we are to build a meaningful, broad based unity against imperialist war. To quote Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party: “there can be no real freedom until the imperialist - world-enemy-number-one - has been stripped of his power”.

We should be clear that our loyalties are with the anti-imperialist world; our loyalties are with the Global South; and we stand united against that world-enemy-number-one of imperialism.