Tariq Ali on Syria: 'Western intervention would be disastrous; Assad must go'; Western hypocrisy condemned

Already Intervention progresses. Russia, Iran and Venezuela export arm to Assad
Western countries and Arab league try to arm anti-Assad,and CIA, Mosad, turk intelligence already entered in SYria, They maneuver in Syria and secret operation progress.
As Independent's Hamiltion says(Friday, 24 February 2012), If we can't intervene, at least we can isolate Syria.And Adrian Hamilton says "Arms, not diplomacy, will decide the fate of Syria"(Friday, 10 February 2012) or Adrian Hamilton: "Only a mass uprising will rid Syria of Assad(Friday, 10 February 2012)"
No intervention? Well you argue like China as bystander

I must agree with Tatsuo that "intervention" has been well underway for some time now. Tariq Ali is right however when he describes the BBC and AlJazeera as being Govt. mouthpieces for propaganda. That being the case;how can any of us assume that 80% of Syrian people want Assad to go.Where is that information verified... who do we trust? Russia, Venezuala and China support the (legitimate/recognised?!) Syrian Govt. and support it but just who exactly is the unholy alliance of the US Imperialists, Zionist Israel and Al Queda supporting? How many of their agents are fighting? Libya post Ghadaffi is a complete mess with unaccountable Brigades running torture camps alonside "official" Govt. ones! Dreadful atrocities are being perpetrated including ethnic cleansing.Is this what NATO killed for? The answer is that as long as Ghadaffi fell they didn't care about the aftermath. Unless a coup or similar neutralises the Syrian Army how exactly will the civil war create peace ,freedom or security? Will the army infact stand aside only to control later as in Egypt? The only beneficaries of this "intervention" are US Imperialism and the march of Zionism. Surely the killing must stop and negotiated reforms take place."Assad must go" is hardly an indication of what will take his place!

"Worse than Libya?" Libya is now the most democratic of the three overturns the Arab Spring has led to thus far (the other two being Tunisia and Egypt). While socialists in the West are scribbling their criticisms of various wings of Syria's revolutionary movement, left-liberal groups like Avaaz are doing real revolutionary work by raising money for cameras and other material aid for the uprising to be smuggled into Syria: http://www.africasia.com/services/news_mideast/article.php?ID=CNG.bed6d5013dbff8ae5506d598c0c69073.1f1 This came as a surprise to me since I'm on their email list and had no idea they were doing this kind of thing. I guess I should read those emails more closely.

If Libya post-intervention is democratic, then so is Afghanistan. 8000 people being tortured in detention, and you call this democratic?

Just because Gadafi was a tyrant, and there was a spontaneous uprising against him, is no reason to support a brutally violent NATO intervention. The number of killed in Libya following the March 18 UN Security Council resolution is higher than the bodycount of the rest of the Arab Spring combined. It dwarfs the number killed in Libya before NATO inervened to protect civillian lives.

There's nothing funny about Libya, Syria and socialists. Fortunately much of the left have proved capable of understanding that things can change their nature, that a genuine peoples uprising hijacked by NATO becomes something else. However, too many seem incabable of seeing anything other than fixed catergories, ie. either it was always an imperialist plot, or it remains a democratic revolution.

This leads to the current debate between 2 camps of mass-muder denialists. Patisans of dictators such as Gadaffi or Assad versus partisans of Western "humanitarian" mass murder.

I support the right of Syrians to armed resistance against their dictatorship. I will never support the West arming the Syrian opposition because there is no single Syrian opposition and the West's assistance will always be to promote whatever violent anti-democratic thugs are willing to act as their proxies.

Western arms to the Syrian opposition is not about helping the opposition but hijacking it. This is already happening in Syria, where Saudi and Qatari arms and intererence have been promoting Sunni sectarian currents and have already diluted and damagedof the secular, anti-communalist politics that initially characterised the uprising.

This has ironically benefitted Assad. There is clear evidence that support for the revolt from religious and ethnic minority communities was initially high but has decreased as increasingly people from these communities are becoming more scared of Sunni sectarian violence than the are of the dictator.

Of course, Assad accused the opposition of being dominated by Sunni Islamist communalists from the beginning. This was initially slander. Western involvement (through the supply of money and arms which so excites the pro-Assad Western left and through the West's appointment of the unrepresentative Syrian National Coouncil as the official sole voice of the Syrian uprising) is working to give reality to Assad's slanders.

I read my Avaaz emails. There are a couple of genuinely progressive campaigns (notably Bradley Manning) but mostly what I observe is a remarkable convergance with US foreign policy. They never go after pro-US tyrants, only tyrants the US is gunning for. And only when the US is gunning for them.

Avaaz's campaign to bring Sudanese dictator to the international court for war crimes stands out in this regard. The US pushed his war crimes indictment as leaverage to force his regime to follow through with the independance referendum in the South. Bashir delivered, the South is now independant, and the US went quiet on the indictment, despite it referring to war crimes in Darfur (still occupied by the Khartoum regime), not the South. Avaaz went quiet on Bashir too.

"So democratic the entire working class was ethnically cleansed"
So who is pumping Libya's oil now? The petty bourgeoisie?
Filipinos, mainly.

"The number of killed in Libya following the March 18 UN Security Council resolution is higher than the bodycount of the rest of the Arab Spring combined."
Killed by who? NATO, Ghadafi, or the revolution?
All sides. The point is that the intervention's (sorry "no fly zone's") premise was to save civilian lives. A lie.

"8000 people being tortured in detention, and you call this democratic?"
Ever hear of the Cheka? Woefully undemocratic!
I have heard of the Cheka. Not sure what they've got to do with Libya or Syria. I wasn't debating history.

"I support the right of Syrians to armed resistance against their dictatorship. I will never support the West arming the Syrian opposition because there is no single Syrian opposition and the West's assistance will always be to promote whatever violent anti-democratic thugs are willing to act as their proxies."
And what if the Syrians who have taken up arms ask, nay beg, for Western arms? Can you really blame people for asking for an American RPG to take out a Syrian tank?
No, I couldn't blame them one bit. But as any Western aid won't actually put an RPG in the hands of your typical Syrian oppositionist but will be channeled to reactionary, anti-democratic thugs, with the agenda of changing the uprisings democratic, inclusive nature into an undemocratic, sectarian one. As someone in the West I will continue to campaign against Western inteference. At the same time, I vehemently oppose those in the anti-war movement currently trying to prettify Assad or paint the whole Syrian uprising as a Western conspiracy.
I support the uprising. But that doesn't mean supporting my bourgeisie's "support" for the uprising because they're not really trying to help. If Syrian democrats have illusions in the West's intentions I don't condemn them, but I'll still oppose Western interference/intervention.

"This leads to the current debate between 2 camps of mass-muder denialists. Patisans of dictators such as Gadaffi or Assad versus partisans of Western 'humanitarian' mass murder."
You talk as if there are only two protagonists in Syria and Libya: Western imperialism or the dictatorial regimes. You are missing the key protagonist: the revolutionary people who are fighting, suffering, and dying.
I don't talk that way at all. I've spent much of the past year arguing with other Australian leftists and anti-war activists some of whom are supporters (or a least defenders) of Gadaffi/Assad and some of whom are supporters of Western "humanitarian" intervention. (Unfortunately, both thse currents exist in the Australian movements, although I think most have a similar perspective to what I do.)
I support neither because I support the revolutionary people. I supported the Libyan uprising in February 2011. But I cannot support what NATO's intervention turned the uprising into because it's horrible. The wiping of Tawergha off the map because of its inhabitants skin colour happened. As did the extreme violence against the Sub-Saharan African migrants.
No doubt you get indignant when Western leftists deny the reality of what is happening in Homs. But why is theses Leftists' mass murder denial any different from denying the crimes being commited in the "new" Libya.
The Western imperialists are right now working hard to hijack the Syrian uprising. I think the best support the Western left can give the uprisings is to oppose this threat.

I very much agree with Vijay Prashad when he writes:
"We have to be vigilant on two fronts: (1) to not let our anti-imperialism lead
to the defense of authoritarian regimes in the region and (2) to not let our
enthusiasm for rebellion lead to cheering on the cruise missiles from US
warships." http://links.org.au/node/2765

In case anyone thinks my political colouring is relevant to this discussion (I'm still trying to work out what Binh was getting at by mentioning the Cheka) I'm in Socialist Alliance and write for Green Left Weekly.
SA statement on Syria http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=1171
SA policy on Arab Spring http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=1168

1. LIBYA
I agree with Trotsky that torture is never justifiable by revolutionaries. Whether the Cheka erred in this regard is a historical question over which I won't claim any particular knowledge.
As for who the detainees are, to be defined as pro-Gadaffi in the new Libya can mean coming from the wrong town, or, of course, being an Afro-Libyan or Sub Saharan African migrant. At the same time many of those who were actually part of Gadaffi's regime are now part of the new regime.
The existence of "popular militias" can mean a lot of things. Ask a Somali or Congolese person.

2. SYRIA
Please read this article by As`ad AbuKhalil http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4593/opposition-to-the-syrian-oppo… I think this article might get reposted on this site.

WE seem to have different views on the role of international solidarity. I write in English for an Australian left newspaper so I'm not trying to inform Syrians and Libyans what I think. And I think the Western left should get a bit more serious about trying to stop the war drives of our ruling classes.
What did the International Brigades achieve in Spain? Perhaps if the left at the time had stayed home and campaigned against the West's blockade of the Republic things might have worked out better. Or perhaps not.
But I seriously think our main task should be educating people in our own countries, which means challenging, not repeating, the lies of our ruling classes. At the same time opposing the lies of our ruling classes with lies of Assad or the Iranian theocracy (as unfortunately some in the anti-war movement are doing) is stupid (and just giving a free kick to the ruling class propaganda which puts the West & its preferred puppets up as the only alternative to Assad).

Finally, you have repeatedly distorted some of the things I said. I never attacked desperate people for seeking aid from the wrong forces. I just pointed out that any Syrian democrat who makes this call is making a mistake they will live to regret (or maybe not live). I don't attack them. But in my GLW articles I do point out to my audience of Westerners that any intervention by the Western ruling classes in Syria will increase the bloodshed and reduce the chances of a democratic outcome. I don't think it shows lack of solidarity not to help someone make a mistake that will cost them (not me) dearly.

But as I said before, the calls for Western intervention are at the moment are not representative of the whole opposition.