Episode 06: We Need to Talk About Syria

The fall of the Assad regime has been widely celebrated but there are already signs that it may lead to an even worse future for the people of Syria and the region.

 

The experiences of those who suffered under the Assad regime are real and their pain and loss should be honoured but we should not do so by ignoring the crimes of others. The people who have suffered and those who will suffer at the hands of Islamists, US client forces, and Turkish proxies are just as valid and meaningful as those who suffered and died under the Syrian Ba'ath regime. We who are not personally affected have a duty to be disinterested, a duty to advocate for every person, not to pick a side because Assad was a ruthless dictator or because we support a particular ideology. In this age of "Western values", pinkwashing, greenwashing, femiwashing and now the HTS's "woke-jihadism" we should know already that the Manichean propaganda machine that makes some people into demonic neo-Hitlers is morally arbitrary. The Western media system does not promote true resisters as its anti-Hitler's, it promotes its own loyal torturers and murderers.

 

We cannot in conscience throw up our hands and join the cynics who say nothing, nor can we countenance the repugnant celebration of the fall of the Assad regime that whitewashes the cruel circumstances and the likely cruel future that will come of it. We have to find a way to understand what this means to humanity that is not predicated on childish notions of heroes and villains.

 

In another world the end of the Syrian Ba'ath regime would be cause for joy, but we do not live in that world. The further empowerment of the US empire and its clients Turkiye and Israel will almost certainly cause more death, grief, pain and destruction than the continued existence of the Assad regime would have. Instead on focusing on the specifics of the Balkanisation of Syria and it future of likely instability and subservience to the US, Israel and Turkiye, I take a broader historical view.

 

Using Tipu Sultan as an analogy I show that the nature of a local potentate, good or bad, is less significant in the long term than the fact that they are local. A bad dictator might kill tens of thousands and will forever be known as an epitome of brutality, but imperial powers can murder hundreds of thousands and it will be viewed as simple the cost of "stability".

 

READING:

William Shawcross: Sideshow

John Atkins Hobson – Imperialism

Lenin – Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Michael Hudson – Superimperialism

Mike Davis – Late Victorian Holocausts