23 February 2012

The deafening silence of the "peace" movement on Syria

Russia arms the Syrian government, as it has done so for 11 years (and for decades before that as the USSR) and so is profiting from the current war being waged by the Assad Ba'athist dictatorship against Syrians who oppose him.

You'd think that the so-called "peace" movement would be protesting.  That Russian embassies worldwide would face pickets, that Russian flags would be burned, led by the Westerners who did just that against US embassies and flags when the US intervened in Iraq.  

Syrians are doing so, but the "peace" activists are strangely uninspired.  Why?

A visit to the "Stop the War Coalition" (STWC) website says it all.  A big focus on backing Iran, that great harbinger of non-intervention, as if a state murdering citizens is less important.  It does have an article about Syria where it opposes Western intervention, but neglects to mention Russian intervention.  Why?  Well STWC doesn't like the West very much.  It would have preferred Muammar Gaddafi massacring Libyans from the air than NATO stopping that and assisting his overthrow.  Why?  What interests did he serve?  Wasn't he waging war against his people, like he did quietly for decades by suppressing dissent?  What is really telling is the STWC goes on about Western sales of arms to the Saudi and Bahrain dictatorships, but is silent about Russia and Iran's intervention in Syria.  You see Russia, Iran and Syrian dictatorships are ok, or at least better than Saudi and Bahrain, and indeed far better than the US, France and the UK intervening.   Its wilful blindness to what Russia and Iran does in Syria, like its wilful blindness to what Syria did in Lebanon, speaks volumes.   STWC is not anti-war, it is anti-Western, anti-liberal democracy, anti-secularism, anti-freedom and anti-capitalist.  It is a Marxist front organisation that provides succour for tyrannies, as long as they aren't Western backed.

Stop the War Coalition is actually "stop the war against those waging war against their own citizens".  Hardly surprising, given its chairman is a friend of the Orwellian cult of dead personality regime in Pyongyang.

Greenpeace?  Silent. 

Iran has sent naval ships to Syria.  Russia continues to sell arms to the Syrian dictatorship.

The arguments against Western military intervention remain compelling, and are primarily about being bogged down in a conflict where no side is an angel and there is an overwhelming risk of civil war being a sectarian battle.   Yet there is a case for blocking Russian and Iranian ships from entering Syrian waters and imposing a no-fly zone.  That, at least, will minimise malignant intervention on the side of Assad.

However, the so-called "peace movement" will likely oppose that, because to them peace within countries, particularly regimes that are not Western friendly and not the result of Western intervention, isn't that important.  It's just another leftwing group that opposes the West that gives them the freedom and wealth to function.

There are no solutions to Syria coming from the "peace" movement or the left.  The conservative right has been burned by Iraq and Afghanistan and has neither the fortitude nor the capacity to support a similar intervention in Syria.   The only way Syria will get better is if Syrians will fight for freedom, if more Syrian soldiers fight against Assad than for him and if Syrian embrace values of secularism, freedom, mutual respect and tolerance for each other.   The best way that can be encouraged is by hindering malignant intervention and by good people being mercenaries and supporting factions in Syria that allow people to defend themselves and fight for a free Syria.

Neither the "peace movement", nor the UN, nor the Arab League can be expected to support let alone do much for any of that.

5 comments:

kowtow said...

The "peace" movement are lying hypocrites.It's generally only when western conservatives are involved that these communist agents crawl out from what ever university or NGO they've been skulking in.

Just look at Rhodesia,silence to the outrages there.
South Africa the same. Whole sale rape, murder ,fear and lawlessness and all we hear are the praises of Saint Nelson Mandela!

Kiwiwit said...

The only point I would take issue with you on is the implication that Iran is somehow less brutal than Syria. The Iranian regime, which you point out is supported by STWC, shows what a paragon of peace and justice it is by:
- allowing girls at age 9 to be legally raped (often by elderly relatives) under the guise of Islamic marriage
- executing more of its citizens than any other country on earth except China (that other paragon of human rights that is an important NZ trading partner)
- machine gunning its own citizens in the streets when they show the slightest inclination to organise any form of independent political group
- funding and supporting terrorism throughout the Middle East and rest of the world
- threatening the existence of nearby states.

I suppose STWC is nothing if not consistent in its support for the world's leading murderers and rapists.

KG said...

If the rest of the "Arab Spring" is any guide, there will be no "free Syria" when Assad is deposed. They'll simply exchange a dicatorship for a savage islamist theocracy.
The risks and potential costs of a blockade to prevent Russia supplying Assad are simply not worth it. It's not the West's problem in any case.
Real freedom must come from Syrians themselves and Western involvement will do nothing at all to ensure that.

Mark Hubbard said...

KG: I don't care about the politics in this, or if they all end in theocracy, as bad as that would be: sometimes you have to act of the moment - Hom is a city full of people who want to be free, and have the right to be free, from a madman who is bombing and killing them. Free men have compassion, as no Statist can ever have, as their rationale is always violence, and out of compassion, the West does need to stop this hideous slaughter, because those poor sods have only bread and butter knives against tanks. They've been deliberately put in a position by the mad man, from which they have no way of defending themselves.

It's appalling what's happening.

Anonymous said...

Is this whole arab spring thing really just shiites v sunnis?