The despot of Damascus

25 Jul

Warning. This post contains heavy irony. Read with caution.

That Bashar al-Assad is a brutal thug, loathed and feared by the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people, is beyond dispute. Not just right-wing Western Media but many on the far left, as well as Guardian house leftists George Monbiot and Owen Jones, have told us so.

Here he is out on the streets, the hostility directed at him palpable.

Here by contrast is a Western leader – in this case M. Macron – out and about last month. See how warm and friendly everyone behind the freedom barrier is. I’m sure the slapped face the French president has just received was a piece of knockabout camaraderie, Gallic style.

What a tragedy that the armed efforts ‘we’ have been making to oust Syria’s tyrannical regime, and install one more to the liking of Washington’s and London’s, have still to bear fruit. Maybe the murderous sanctions a peace-loving West is hitting Syria with will do the trick.

You can’t help lamenting though that Hillary didn’t win in 2016. Her No Fly Zones plan for Syria promised a BOGOF. Not only would it have grounded the Syrian Air Force to secure the earthly paradise for Syria the same tactic had delivered, in her capacity as Obama’s Secretary of State, for Libya. With Russian planes the only foreign presence lawfully operating inside the country, and flying sorties over “moderate Islamists” in the north west – close, that is, to NATO Turkey – the only thing in the way of thermonuclear showdown seemed to be Donaldo’s deplorables.

History, alas, is rife with missed opportunities!

4 Replies to “The despot of Damascus

  1. Louis Proyect – another (ahem!) extreme Leftist – has an axe to aim at Assad. LP talks a lot about something called the Ba’athist Amen Corner which I thought was an Islamist Barbershop Quartet.

    • He’s not alone George.

      Here’s another example – http://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2021/07/10/left-wing-communism-infantile-disorder/. – of the infantile left doing the heavy lifting on behalf of imperialism and its security services (shades of Bleasdales GBH):

      https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-10-02/lazy-day-office

      A position which does not seemed to have matured in the almost two years since it was written judging by more recent output.

      The irony of quoting the stooge of the Western security services, Bellingcat, as a reliable source whilst lazily accusing others of touting ‘conspiricy theories’; along with the consistent ignoring of evidence from OPCW whistleblowers over alleged chemical attacks, does not require too much dot to dot as to who is pulling the strings of the Alliance for Workers Liberty.

      If people like this and their useful idiot followers had been around in the thirties they’d have been writing earnest missives about how accurate the Zioniev letter was – because it’s all about whose at the front of the Vanguard by attacking the ‘left’ competition rather than any serious challenge to the status quo.

      • The irony of quoting the stooge of the Western security services, Bellingcat, as a reliable source whilst lazily accusing others of touting ‘conspiricy theories’ …

        Sometimes the irony is too great, the sheer chutzpah of criminal obtuseness too vast, for mere flesh and blood to refute.

    • George I’ve had a few run ins with Louis. He featured a great deal in a second post, on which you commented: Syria – how Trotskyism got it so wrong. That was written in November 2019 and what has emerged since – in particular the revelations on the lies, Washington arm-twisting and censorship of the OPCW’s Douma investigation – has done nothing to strengthen his case!

      I hadn’t encountered that phrase, Ba’athist Amen Corner, so had to look it up. Here is Louis in full flow in 2016 on the BAC. I feel no strong impulse to take him on yet again. He’s clearly an intelligent man whose obtuseness flows from a permanent revolution perspective that has gotten the Western left precisely nowhere. As for the wellsprings of his famed nastiness, in what it pleases him to call debate, I leave that to the shrinks.

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