(Swans - November 18, 2013) Don't you wish you could hear the voice of sanity, at least from time to time? In America it's all about Obamacare and the republidemocrat pas de deux. In Europe, they don't know what to do to keep the lid on the pressure cooker as the general mess is deepening month after month. Unsurprisingly, the drama occurring in Syria and the slow disintegration of the country doesn't make the news anymore. More surprisingly (but is it?) our friendly Marxist revolutionaries have jumped on the anti-Assad bandwagon, as they had in the Libyan case. What's going on here?
Not being an expert at insulting revolutionaries, let me relate a note I received from a French correspondent:
Regarding the Middle East, perhaps you could tell the Marxist revolutionaries to stop siding with Saudi Arabia, the other absolute Gulf monarchies, Turkey, Israel, and the CIA against the Syrian government, the same way they sided with NATO against Qaddafi. They are making fools of themselves. Point them in the direction of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Ecuador, Zimbabwe...and ask them what these countries had/have in common with Libya and Syria...like their respective struggles to remain independent from the globalized world controlled by Western interests. I guess they are much too much educated to figure this out. It's hilarious.
I'm not sure this is hilarious. To see leftists and liberals applauding the deliberate disintegration of another nation through a civil war pitching Sunnis against Shias is rather pathetic. Saudi Arabia, a far more despotic regime than Syria, an absolute monarchy headed by the al Saud family for generations, at least since 1932, that has no constitution, no parliament, no elections, no equality (women don't even have the right to drive or walk alone in the streets), a regime flush with petrodollars that for decades has been exporting and financing the most violent and intolerant form of Islam (Wahhabism) all over the world...Yes, this regime, with Qatar and other emirates (and the CIA), has been the main banker of the Syrian uprising and purveyor of military hardware, and, yes, this is the regime that leftists and liberals support in the name of revolution, freedom, and democracy -- all that with the great powers in the background... Please!
Saudi Arabia ought to be better examined. As much as it appears to be a strong ally of the U.S., it actually has been the biggest financier of groups and movements violently opposed to the U.S. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton once testified that Saudi Arabia was a "critical financial base" to fund "terrorists" and...the Taliban (memo leaked by Wikileaks in 2010). Everything does not look like it appears.
That unrepentant Marxists can align themselves with the most repressive regimes in the world is truly head-scratching. It makes no sense. I'll leave it at that, utterly disappointed, but as a consolation prize, I'm glad to keep the good company of Monthly Review and What's left (among a few others).
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Gilles d'Aymery on Swans -- with bio. He is Swans' publisher and co-editor. (back)