{"id":20842,"date":"2017-11-16T07:05:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T07:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/?p=20842"},"modified":"2025-03-01T17:23:54","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T17:23:54","slug":"monbiot-syria-and-universalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/2017\/11\/16\/monbiot-syria-and-universalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Monbiot, Syria and Universalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m worried about George. An admirer of many years standing of his excellent columns charting capitalism\u2019s destruction of nature, I\u2019m dismayed both by his stance on Syria and manner of defending it. His latest Guardian piece, yesterday \u2013 A lesson from Syria: it\u2019s crucial not to fuel far-right conspiracy theories<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 is depressingly typical. The man who writes with such clarity, such evidence based reason, on the ties between environmental recklessness and big money repeatedly shows himself prepared to suspend his critical faculties \u2013 while projecting that very sin on his opponents \u2013 when it comes to Syria and the Assad \u2018regime\u2019.<\/p>\n

Even the title of this latest piece is misleading when those in his sights are of the left. I mean John Pilger, who needs no introduction, and Seymour Hersh, the veteran whose tenacity broke the My Lai story all those years ago. The disingenuity continues apace as we read on. Paragraph two tells us:<\/p>\n

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) last month published its investigation <\/a><\/strong>into the chemical weapons attack on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun<\/a><\/strong>, which killed almost 100 people on 4 April and injured around 200. After examining the competing theories and conducting wide-ranging interviews, laboratory tests and forensic analysis of videos and photos, it concluded that the atrocity was caused by a bomb filled with sarin, dropped by the government of Syria.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t share Monbiot\u2019s faith in the impartiality of UN agencies, OPCW included. If you deem western powers guilty of a dirty war on Syria whose drivers \u2013 like those in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and a barely visible Yemen \u2013 had little to do with their sanctimonious rationales, you\u2019ll likely share my scepticism but that\u2019s not my point. When I searched for the report I found the OPCW indeed declared that sarin was used at Idlib on April 4 this year (point 1.5 of its summary). The report also says (point 2.5 of its Legal Framework) that:<\/p>\n

The scope of the FFM [OPCW Fact Finding Mission] mandate does not include the task of attributing responsibility for the alleged use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So George, did you know this and choose not to share it with your Guardian readers? Or were you too busy trashing \u2018denialism\u2019 to actually read the report?<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s piece houses other examples of questionable integrity. Monbiot\u2019s second link is to a Guardian piece by Emma Graham-Harrison. Written the day after the attack, it begins with this assertion:<\/p>\n

Syrian government planes\u00a0carried out a dawn raid on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on Tuesday morning. Following the airstrikes, residents reported whole families found dead in their beds, with victims and injured survivors showing symptoms that match poisoning by nerve agents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm. Why bother with the expense of a UN investigation? Why not ask the Guardian, noted for its extensive presence in Syria? It must be right if Emma Graham-Harrison says so.<\/p>\n

Enough of the sarcasm. You get the point. Monbiot\u2019s piece does not withstand careful scrutiny. Here\u2019s another sample:<\/p>\n

The Syrian government has\u00a0a long history of chemical weapons use<\/strong><\/a>, and the OPCW\u2019s conclusions concur with a\u00a0wealth of witness testimony<\/a><\/strong>. But a major propaganda effort has sought to discredit such testimony, and characterise the atrocity as a \u201cfalse-flag attack\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three comments. One, the first link above is to a roll call of imperialism\u2019s frontline warriors, a who\u2019s who of western aggression: Obama and Netanyahu, McCain and French Foreign Minister Fabius \u2013 predecessor of Jean-Marc Ayrault, whose \u2018incontestable evidence\u2019 of Damascus having authored the sarin attack on Idlib we have yet to see. (Sadly, \u201cwe have evidence\u201d is all too easily mistaken for evidence when repeated ad infinitum by mainstream media.) This list of the great and not so good willing to damn Assad to hell and back also takes in \u2013 just as risibly but in a different way \u2013 the Syrian Observatory on Human Rights. That, in case you were fazed by the grand title, is the one-man band of a disgruntled Syrian in Coventry.<\/p>\n

(Monbiot later cites, to show up the flat-earth denialism he so roundly trashes, widespread scepticism<\/del> denialism re another \u2018impartial\u2019 source, the so-called White Helmets. Leaving aside their invisibility when Aleppo was finally rid of ISIS, White Helmet claims to be independent of government funding were given the lie in April 2016, when US State Department Press Officer Mark Toner revealed they\u2019d had $23 million to date from his department. More on this aspect here<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Two, the second link \u2013 that \u2018wealth of testimony\u2019 \u2013 is in fact the product of a one-man visit to what was then \u2018rebel\u2019 held Idlib by Guardian and Daily Star reporter, Kareem Shaheen, a man with a long record of hostility to Damascus. Don\u2019t take my word, check him out. Meanwhile Monbiot cites the very same piece later in the article as though it were something new. In my book that crosses the line from laziness to subterfuge since, taken alongside other examples of multiple and\/or shoddy citings, it suggests an array of evidence, i.e. of Assad\u2019s guilt, far wider than it really is.<\/p>\n

Three, the idea of false flag chemical attacks is dismissed out of hand. Why? Here I quote from the post I\u2019m about to replicate, below and in full. This extract is directed not at Monbiot but a man very similar in his flawed grasp of imperialism. The context is not Idlib 2017 but Ghouta 2013:<\/p>\n

What does Owen Jones believe Damascus could gain from such an attack? Conversely, what is it that stops him seeing that the terrorists, with or without the complicity of western or Saudi intelligence services, had everything to gain from yet another false flag operation to justify further and more direct western intervention against the state they loathe for its multi-faith secularism, Washington for its \u201cArab communism\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve yet to see any convincing answer to either question, and regard Monbiot\u2019s dismissal of false flag attack as disgraceful: \u201cI have found no credible evidence that Syrian jihadists have access to sarin.\u201d Thus spake George Monbiot, adding chemistry and ordnance to the many disciplines he\u2019s master of.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an alternative view:<\/p>\n

[Sarin] is not especially hard to produce, in terms of both resources and expertise. \u201cA competent chemist could make it, and possibly very quickly, in a matter of days,\u201d says John Gilbert, a senior science fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, who spent much of his Air Force career assessing countries\u2019 WMD capabilities. Producing sarin doesn\u2019t require any kind of massive facility; a roughly 200 square foot room would do.<\/span><\/p>\n

This, in case you were wondering, was taken not from a \u2018denialist site\u2019 but one convinced Assad is a bad guy who has to go. There\u2019s a small clue in\u00a0the piece\u2019s<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0opening line:<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad unleashed a chemical attack on the civilian residents of Khan Sheikun<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are many other holes in Monbiot\u2019s column yesterday but I\u2019ll leave them to those better versed. And let me say now I do not say Assad is innocent. I say that (a) his guilt is highly unlikely on ground of motive, (b) terrorist guilt is highly likely on grounds of motive and past form, (c) few if any mainstream sources can be trusted on matters where imperialism\u2019s core interests and plans are concerned. See my short post, Syria: what we know and what we don\u2019t<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

My aim is not to dissect Monbiot\u2019s piece line by line but to contextualise it. Why does he take the position he has on Syria? And why in a way that not only compromises his record of calling out other aspects of capitalism, but takes a broker I see as fundamentally honest to the edge \u2013 some say over it \u2013 of its opposite? My answer to the first question is universalism unexamined. I\u2019m sure of that. My answers to the second are guesswork, and in any case less important.<\/p>\n

Universalism in an unfair world<\/h4>\n

For his well researched work on the British establishment, you couldn\u2019t slide a cigarette paper between Owen Jones and me. The same goes for George Monbiot\u2019s forensic but neatly penned linking of environmental vandalism to big money. Other of their writings, however \u2013 on Russia and Syria respectively \u2013 strike me as misconceived. In both cases the cause is the same. Each, in arguing sincerely held views on Putin or Assad, invokes the principle of universalism.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a socialist, you\u2019re a universalist, not a relativist: you believe all people deserve the same economic and political rights. That can\u2019t be achieved without democracy\u200a\u2014\u200anot the limited democracy the West currently has, but a full democracy that we should aspire to. That means not lauding a regime which, despite its achievements, lacks the democratic rights a truly socialist society must enjoy as a bare minimum. Owen Jones, 29\/11\/2016<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we deny crimes against humanity, or deny the evidence pointing to the authorship of these crimes, we deny the humanity of the victims. Aren\u2019t we supposed to be better than this? If we do not support the principle of universalism \u2013 human rights and justice for everyone, regardless of their identity or the identity of those who oppress them \u2013 what are we for? George Monbiot,\u00a0Disavowal<\/em>\u00a027\/04\/2017<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jones writes four days after Fidel Castro\u2019s death, Monbiot three weeks after tweeting his 99% certainty<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>that Damascus\u00a0 used chemical weapons at Idlib on April 4 2017. (This was one of a series of tweets and posts pouring scorn on the \u2018denialists\u2019 who won\u2019t accept what he deems an open and shut case against Assad.) For both writers, universalism means condemning human rights abuse wherever it arises: be it in Ferguson Missouri or Aleppo, Abu Ghraib or Havana. On this the pair are in tune with an earlier writer whose hallowed status has obscured questionable deeds that to my mind arise from the logic of a universalism unexamined. I mean the other George, who gave the world 1984 – and MI5 lists of communist sympathisers<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a principle, who\u2019d argue with the universality of human rights? Not me, though I have caveats. First, let\u2019s not define such rights narrowly. That\u2019s so we don\u2019t get worked up, played even, over abuses real or alleged in countries our rulers have screwed for centuries, and in a different form still are screwing, while barely registering burgeoning infant mortality by humanitarian sanction<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0soaring cancer rates<\/a><\/strong> from depleted uranium in the wake of the latest humanitarian invasion. Universalists seldom ignore the latter entirely, so broadening \u2018human rights\u2019 to take in such as welfare provision, literacy and prosperity levels makes it hard, if we\u2019ve an ounce of intellectual rigour, to play an old get-out card. It gives less latitude for a lazy absolutism that cries \u2018a plague on both houses\u2019 while at best doing nothing, at worst giving de facto support to the America led aggression we piously deplore.<\/p>\n

A wider definition of human rights obliges real-world assessments which discriminate between greater and lesser abuse, and avoid specious moral equivalence. Suppose every word our media say about Assad to be true: a huge stretch, I know, but stay with me. Could he inflict a fraction of the death, misery and mayhem the US and its partners in crime have? (To answer this we need to acquaint ourselves with a little postwar history. It helps too to know something of the global balance of power, and financing and stupendous scale of America\u2019s for-profit arms industry.)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another question. Are any modern weapons not chemical? The implicit mantra \u2013 Tomahawk Good \u2026 Sarin Baad \u2013 shows, as does the barrel bomb brouhaha<\/a><\/strong>, just how easily red herringed we are by the spurious categorisations of a Washington dominated UN.<\/p>\n

(Two years ago I visited a home for the disabled in Hoi Anh, Vietnam. Half the residents were disfigured, many in grotesque ways, by the Agent Orange the Pentagon used in its war on the Vietnamese people. Surprised by the youth of some, I was told the effects are congenital. To this day children are born with severe defects as a result of chemical warfare Washington arm-twisted the UN out of describing as such. On what ground? That harm to civilians was collateral and secondary to the aim of depriving Vietcong\/NVA of ground cover. In fact millions of hectares of land stayed uncultivable into the twenty-first century. This in a country on starvation rations for decades due to America\u2019s embargo, and punishing of nations friendly to Hanoi. As with barrel bombs, too many liberals who deem themselves well informed are duped by arbitrary categorisations designed in Washington and relayed by \u2018our\u2019 media, a fraud of breath-taking cynicism rendered all the more effective by the naivete of leftist comment in liberal media. And since I\u2019m sure you were wondering, no; America has paid not one cent in compensation to Agent Orange victims. Not chemical warfare, you see.)<\/p>\n

A second caveat is that we don\u2019t take as truth incontrovertible every claim which, in an age of \u2018humanitarian intervention\u2019, will lend cover to aggression for profit. Not even when those claims are backed by sober voices packaged as impartial experts, and relayed by journalists not often mendacious<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0but too often sharing the credulity of their audiences, topped up in their case by \u2018career focus\u2019. Journalists who know what\u2019s good for them please editors. Editors who know what\u2019s good for them please proprietors. Proprietors, by definition fully paid up members of the ruling class, crave honours and need advertisers.<\/p>\n

A third is to do as E.M. Forster counsels, and only connect<\/em>.\u00a0IMF bullying<\/a><\/strong> and covert ops, deadly sanction and deadlier missile strike put states dubbed \u2018pariah\u2019 (read, distasteful to Wall Street) on a war footing. We in the west enjoy freedom of expression and limited democracy, fruits of a prosperity based on exploiting the global south. When progressive governments must fight for survival \u2013 as in Castro\u2019s Cuba, Chavez\u2019s Venezuela and Ba\u2019athist Syria \u2013 those freedoms may jeopardise gains without which democracy and human rights are meaningless except as cover for their antithesis. I mean economic planning instead of casino capitalism. I mean healthcare and schooling for all, not just those who can afford it.<\/p>\n

The jeopardising factor here comes not from freedom of expression per se but its abuse by vested interests. These may be comprador capitalists, like the Venezeulan elite who gained from the impoverishment of their compatriots, who stood to lose from nationalisations<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>that helped reduce said impoverishment, and whose near monopoly control of the media is as big an affront to meaningful democracy in that country as is its equivalent in ours. Or they may be the jihadists backed for decades by\u00a0\u2018our\u2019 governments<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0while \u2018our\u2019 media decried Hafez al-Assad\u2019s ruthless crackdowns on the Muslim Brotherhood: a suppression of human rights which for all its brutality enabled Syria\u2019s\u00a0extraordinary progress<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on the very factors \u2013 literacy, welfare, shared prosperity on the back of state ownership of key sectors, womens\u2019 rights and secularism \u2013 I want included in the definition before I sign up for the breezy universalism of Jones and Monbiot. In the meantime I adopt a stance out of favour with much of the left; critical but unconditional defence. What I hear from self styled universalists is too much of the critical, too little of the defence.<\/p>\n

On that last, two 2013 pieces by Fred Weston<\/a><\/strong> are worth reading. These In Defence of Marxism articles make fair points on Assad (mainly Hafez) failings. They also set out a sound statement, albeit dated in its implicit vanguardism, of the case against Stalinism, \u2018stageism\u2019 and \u2018socialism in one country\u2019. Given that Trotsky is favourably cited it\u2019s striking Weston makes no mention of the critical-but-unconditional meme, central to post-war Trotskyism and one of the more useful legacies of the ill fated Fourth International. If that\u2019s all too estoteric, my point is he\u2019s too busy trashing \u2013 on grounds I share and with a cogency I\u2019d welcome in other contexts \u2013 the anti-imperialist credentials of Ba\u2019athism to grasp the biggest aspect of this mess. Assad may be insufficiently opposed to imperialism for Fred Weston\u2019s tastes, but is sufficiently in the way of it to be on the receiving end of its wrath. Says Weston:<\/p>\n

\n
\u2026 [the idea of] the Assad regime as anti-imperialist \u2026 can only be sustained if one suffers selective historical amnesia and ignores what the regime has actually done to collaborate with imperialism. In 1976, Hafez Assad invaded refugee camps in Lebanon to suppress Palestinian resistance, coordinating its operations with Israel, and with the full backing of US imperialism. Syria had in fact been called on to intervene by the west (including Kissinger) to prevent the defeat of the right-wing Maronite Christian militias in the civil war that had started in 1975 between progressive secularists, Muslim militias and the PLO. Later, in 1990-91 the regime cooperated in the US attack on Iraq; in 2003 the regime did not lift a finger to defend Iraq against imperialist attack. It withdrew from Lebanon under US pressure.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What\u2019s wrong here (on top of slyly conflating Hafez and Bashar) is the tacit demand that an imperialised state behave with anti imperialist consistency to \u2018earn\u2019 the support of the left in imperialist states. But unless he thinks the west attacks Syria because<\/em>\u00a0 of the sins he lists, and I\u2019m sure he thinks no such thing, Weston makes the very confusion critical but unconditional defence<\/em>\u00a0 disentangles. Internationalism begins at home. A key tenet is that imperialised states be defended from our own imperialism, regardless of Stalinist, nationalist, theocratic or other defects in their worldviews, or failings real or cynically concocted in their leaders. Such defects and failings must be condemned where proven, but always in the context of \u2013 yet meticulously decoupled from \u2013 unwavering insistence that the prime villain is \u2018our\u2019 imperialism.<\/p>\n

Why does this matter? Because the left in the global north has a sorry record of capitulation to ferocious dominant narratives. That\u2019s why defence of the Provisional IRA was tougher for British socialists than defence of an ANC whose program and leaders were equally flawed. Conversely, it\u2019s why white South Africans in the ANC were truly heroic \u2013 likewise Israeli Jews fighting their own apartheid state \u2013 and why it was easier to defend the IRA if you were French or American than British. But in their hostility to Damascus, western media have set a climate as vicious as that created by British media at the height of the \u2018troubles\u2019 in the Six Counties. I\u2019m sure Weston, like Jones and Monbiot, does not intend it but his attacks on \u2018misguided\u2019 leftists who back Damascus against Washington will<\/em>\u00a0 add to a narrative of vilification funded by the deepest pockets and driven by the most venal interests. Music to Wall Street ears, they\u2019ll also give cover for those on the left more interested in an easy life than in challenging a criminally insane world order at the points of greatest criminality. In this respect Weston\u2019s brand of Marxism serves, objectively, the same ends as Monbiot\u2019s and Jones\u2019s universalism.<\/p>\n

That need for widening our definition of human rights, and being sceptical when leaders and media take the moral high ground on nations they do so much to impoverish, applies not only to imperialised peoples but to weaker imperialisms. <\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> whose rise I welcome not as \u2018good guys\u2019 to the west\u2019s \u2018bad guys\u2019 but as sorely needed counterbalance. A materialist, not an idealist, I don\u2019t locate evil in the peculiarities of any national psyche. I think in terms of class not country, and see our rulers concealing \u2013 not from rival leaders but their own subjects \u2013 the interests they truly serve beneath a cloak of morality. That needn\u2019t imply conspiracism. (On the whole I locate evil in the logic of capital; its dynamic accelerated by the fall of the Soviet Union.) Yes, history is rife with conspiracy \u2013 proven in the cases of Tonkin and Saddam\u2019s WMDs; deservedly suspected at Idlib \u2013 but dark plots are more history\u2019s catalysts than its primary drivers. What\u2019s more they tend to be seen by their authors as For The Greater Good.<\/p>\n

Hence my open letter to Jones<\/a><\/strong>; its subject Putin, its theme the flaws of a universalism detached from realpolitik. Hence too my saying Monbiot is\u00a0astray on Syria<\/a><\/strong>. I don\u2019t doubt the sincerity of his views, though they\u2019ve led him to errors of reason and lapses of evidential standards. His failing also implicates him personally. See the Media Lens response<\/a><\/strong> to his Disavowal. Driving his disingenuity and flagrant misrepresentations, calmly dissected by ML, are the vanity and blinkered credulity of a man who can\u2019t admit error: one who boasts he can \u2018handle more reality than most\u2019, and by that boast opens a door on the very opposite.<\/p>\n

Owen Jones\u2019s very similar vanity has led him to very similar misrepresentations over Syria. He wouldn\u2019t share a 2013 Stop the War platform with Mother Agnes, mother superior of St. James Monastery in Qara, Syria, who\u2019d spoken out on the \u2018civil war\u2019 and western-backed terrorists. (He\u2019s less fastidious about appearing on BBC Question Time alongside champions of the west\u2019s wars on the middle east.) Jones blogged<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that Mother Agnes is<\/p>\n

perhaps most infamous for publishing a 50-page report claiming that the video footage of the Ghoutta massacre was faked, that the children suffocating to death had been kidnapped by rebels and were actually sleeping or \u201cunder anaesthesia\u201d\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jones provides no link to\u00a0said report<\/strong>.<\/a>\u00a0My guess, and that\u2019s all it can be, is he didn\u2019t read beyond its introduction. And it is a difficult read; lengthy and detailed, with erratic \u2018signposting\u2019 of the significance of every factor it documents. The difficulties are compounded for a lay westerner by technical terms, Arab names and the misspellings and unorthodox syntax of a writer whose first language is not English. Moreover, the report was rushed out to counter jihadist accounts lapped up by western media bent on damning Assad in ways that, intended or not, prime us for further aggression in our name on the middle east.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, an hour or two studying Mother Agnes\u2019s report throws up serious questions Jones fails to address. How come a photo shown on page 20, offered by \u2018rebels\u2019 as evidence of atrocity by Assad, had been used a week earlier in Egypt after Muslim Brotherhood violence? What does Jones say to relatives claiming to have seen, in other \u2018rebel\u2019 supplied footage, their own children abducted earlier that month from Alawite villages, almost certainly by Al Nusra terrorists? Is it so far fetchedly incredible \u2013 as Jones\u2019s airy refusal to trouble himself with the details would suggest \u2013 that these zealots, famous for both unspeakable cruelty and crude but effective propaganda, would act with such cynicism?<\/p>\n

Related are two questions I\u2019ve raised in other posts. What does Jones believe Damascus could gain from such an attack? Conversely, what is it that stops him seeing that the terrorists, with or without the complicity of western or Saudi intelligence services, had everything to gain from yet another false flag operation to justify further and more direct western intervention against the state they loathe for its multi-faith secularism, Washington for its \u201cArab communism\u201d?<\/p>\n

Crucially, in a foreshadowing of Monbiot\u2019s misrepresentation of Media Lens over Idlib, Jones neglects to say that Mother Agnes is not offering an alternative narrative for Ghouta. Rather, she is pointing out flaws in the case for Damascus having used sarin there.<\/p>\n

Says blogger Phil Greaves in Jones on Syria<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Since the onset of the Syrian conflict, Mother Agnes has made efforts to combat the skewed narratives emerging from corrupt western, Israeli, and Gulf Oil and Gas media \u2013 not least regarding the\u00a0alleged chemical weapons attacks<\/a>\u00a0in Ghouta. Contrary to the smears, Agnes doesn\u2019t deny people died, nor offer a complete alternative narrative. Her questions are focused on the many inconsistencies and inaccuracies within the \u201cofficial narrative\u201d and dubious YouTube videos touted as impartial evidence. It seems the CIA were also less than convinced of the US governments \u201cassessment\u201d; so much so that a\u00a0mass resignation<\/a>\u00a0was threatened if their name was attached to\u00a0John Kerry\u2019s dodgy dossier<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, a considerable\u00a0open source collaborative<\/a>\u00a0effort to determine the perpetrator has drawn the logical conclusion that only the rebels could have been responsible. In addition, the much politicised UN report that attempted to point the finger at the Syrian army has also come under scrutiny from highly qualified avenues for its poor methodologies and misleading conclusions. Regardless of all the above, the fact Mother Agnes actually resides in Syria, is the head of an organisation that has mediated between warring factions and enabled the safe evacuation of civilians, and consistently calls for peaceful reconciliation and dialogue, doesn\u2019t count for much in the eyes of rabid western pundits eager to demonize anyone that dare question, or offer a counter narrative to their fabrication-laden fantasies on Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n

Owen Jones has written virtually nothing on the Syrian conflict. His understanding of events is largely based on the dominant narratives portrayed in western media. No doubt, like any self-respecting petty bourgeois leftist of London, Jones gets his information from the west\u2019s supposed liberal establishment newspapers, who in recent years have stood proudly alongside right-wing media in cheerleading for disastrous western-led wars of aggression. The conflict in Syria has been no exception, the Guardian\u2019s\u00a0totally skewed coverage<\/a>, that lends more from Whitehall\/CIA\/Mossad talking points than reality, has been well documented and debunked.<\/span>
\nAccordingly, Jones\u2019 ideas on Syria fall in line with this narrative: yes, the \u201cIslamist rebels\u201d are BAD guys (meaning there are some GOOD moderate guys that nobody can find yet, or, in Owen\u2019s case even name), but Assad is a dictator, a war criminal, \u201cbarbarous\u201d, \u201che needs to go\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any reflection on\u00a0cause and effect<\/a>; the long and relevant historical context of US-led subversion and instigation of terrorist insurgencies in the name of \u201crevolution\u201d; or the underlying\u00a0geopolitical dynamics<\/a>\u00a0that helped to create and exacerbate the extremist-led insurgency is far too much nuance for Jones\u2019 simplistic binary narratives: Assad is BAD, and anyone that supports the Syrian government or refuses to support its ouster through coercion or violence is also BAD, by definition. What then, do Jones\u2019 simplistic definitions mean for the millions of Syrians that still support their President and government? Well, like the nun, they are obviously evil and severely misguided.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, what would they know, Living in Syria and all? This stance of vulgar superiority is indicative of the vast undercurrent of western bourgeois Orientalism which still oozes from the pores of western media and its decrepit \u201cjournalists\u201d when their stance on \u201cothers\u201d threatens to detriment their self-imposed \u201ccredibility\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Greaves is wide of the mark in saying that for Jones anyone that .. refuses to support [Assad\u2019s] ouster through coercion or violence is BAD<\/em>. Jones the universalist does indeed condemn regime change in the middle east but Jonathan Cook\u2019s response, below, to Monbiot\u2019s empty denunciation of the warmongers is equally applicable here.<\/p>\n

FWIW I don\u2019t see either man as fundamentally dishonest. I do see them as complacent: a consequence on the one hand of their revered status on the liberal left; on the other their employment by a Guardian on a decidedly rightward drift. The first can turn the steadiest head, the second exert a groupthink effect whose dynamics need not depend on censorship or other forms of editorial conspiracy.<\/p>\n

But vanity, complacency and any ethical consequences thereof are secondary. My focus is on flaws intrinsic to uncritical universalism. I\u2019ll give the last \u2013 OK, penultimate \u2013 word to Jonathan Cook, familiar to all who are up to speed on the Palestine travesty, and in my opinion the best informed middle east commentator on the block.<\/p>\n

Monbiot has repeatedly denied he wants a military attack on Syria. But if he weakly accepts whatever narratives are crafted by those who do \u2013 and refuses to subject them to meaningful scrutiny \u2013 he is decisively helping to promote such an attack.<\/p>\n

Noam Chomsky made this point in a different context in Understanding Power:
\n\u201cSo when American dissidents criticize the atrocities of some enemy state like Cuba or Vietnam, it\u2019s no secret what the effects of that criticism are going to be: it\u2019s not going to have any effect whatsoever on the Cuban regime, for example, but certainly will help the torturers in Washington and Miami to keep inflicting their campaign of suffering on the Cuban population [i.e. through the US-led embargo]. Well, that is something I do not think a moral person would want to contribute to.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m worried about George. An admirer of many years standing of his excellent columns charting capitalism\u2019s destruction of nature, I\u2019m dismayed both by his stance on Syria and manner of defending it. His latest Guardian piece, yesterday \u2013 A lesson … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,26,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-general","category-media","category-politics-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20842"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142391,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20842\/revisions\/142391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}