By Tim Anderson
the article is here
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/52265
This is a letter to the GLW editor
Tariq Ali’s article on Syria (GLW 19 Sept) illustrates the irrelevance of most western Trotskyists to the dreadful conflict in that country.
‘A plague on both your houses’ is his message. In the grand tradition of claiming the high moral ground from the sidelines, Tariq neither supports the Syrian government nor imperial intervention. This equanimity is reinforced by the cartoon, which suggests a moral equivalence between Presidents Obama and Assad: one the imperial leader with the largest armies on earth, the other the leader of a small former colony.
“There is nothing even vaguely progressive about this regime” Tariq proclaims, dismissing the most multicultural and religiously tolerant nation in the region, with universal free education and health. Nothing to defend, they can all go to hell. Intervention is a disaster and the insurgents are ‘perfectly capable of carrying out their own massacres and blaming them on the regime’. This is ultra-leftism without an ethical compass.
The article is really an apologia by Tariq to those who complained about his earlier doubts about the Houla massacre. Now, apparently on the basis of UN statements, he asserts: “the regime was responsible”. Well, no. Anyone interested in Houla can see my article (Google: ‘Syria’s ‘false flag’ terrorism, Houla and the United Nations’).
Tariq’s line of reasoning is backed by a classical ultra-left assumption: post-colonial nation-states are worth nothing. Being a compromised project, the Syrian nation-state can be swept away. No matter if an imperial puppet or Iraq-style sectarian chaos takes over, because some abstract popular movement or working class will, later on, have its day.
There is a veneer of democratic sensibility, which recycles some Syrian National Council myths: “I hoped the scale of the uprising”, Tariq says, “would force the regime into negotiations and a jointly agreed plan to elect an Assembly that would decide on a new constitution ... It was not to be”. In fact, Syria did hold a referendum in February this year (57% participation) which adopted a new constitution, removing the Baath Party monopoly and introducing a multi-party system. The FSA tried to enforce a boycott; they have never had any interest in negotiations.
Never mind the new constitution, never mind defending the secular state, Tariq’s lines are the same as those from Hilary Clinton: “Get rid of Assad and his henchmen”. But this war is not about the survival of Bashar al-Assad, it is about the survival of a multicultural and independent Syrian nation.
How different is the Latin American reaction. All the left states back the sovereignty of the Syrian people, a political process led by the Syrian government and the territorial integrity of the Syrian nation. They have linked their analysis to some ethical principles.