This isn’t about whether you support America’s airstrikes on Syria or not. I personally find the need to protest every time America does something militarily, yet turn a total blind eye to when Russia does the same hypocritical and morally questionable at the very least. But I do not wish to get hung up on that issue here. For you don’t need to think Trump dropping bombs on Syrian air bases was a good idea to think that defending the Assad regime (and the man himself) is a very, very bad idea.
My Twitter feed has been inundated over the last day of so with hard left types tweeting wishes of support for al-Assad and his wonderful government. The worst one I saw had a picture of Assad praying which said something along the lines of “Looking at this picture, are we supposed to believe this man could be responsible for killing innocents?” I feel like shouting at these blockheads: listen, I know you hate the West and think we’re always the bad guys. But no one who knows anything about the Middle East in the slightest has ever been in any doubt about the brutality of the Assad regime, even pre-2011. A famous way they used to deal with political dissent in the old days was to kidnap your children, kill them, cut off their genitals and then send you back the mutilated body. Assad’s regime used to be like Mubarak’s Egypt – everyone knew it was awful, but it was tolerated for fear of what might replace it. How do you topple Assad and save the Alawites and Christians in Syria from being slaughtered, some used to ask. So the idea that Assad is a saint is something you have pulled out of your ignorant arses.
How did the Left end up openly adoring horrible, despotic regimes? When did this change take place? Or has it just been laying dormant within the system, comparable to back in the 1930s and 40s when the Left tried to defend Stalin until the bitter end? It really takes all logical consistency out of everything the Left says when they simultaneously critique Wall Street and everything else they dislike and then in the same breath adorate dictators.
Here’s what I have to say to the Left: if you want to get people outside of your small clique behind a better vision of how society might be run, you would have an easier time of it if you stopped regurgitating RT memes and started discussing your positive view of how the world could be different. The despot porn needs to go, unless you want to turn more people into Tories.
I suppose it’s only to be expected that people will use comments from the lunatic fringe to try to attack “the Left” as a whole.
Personally, I think it’s more interesting that Jeremy Corbyn is saying that military action needs to be authorised by the UN, while Tim Farron is calling for more of it and wants Britain to join in. It’s an almost precise reversal of the positions of Tony Blair and Charles Kennedy over Iraq 15 years ago.
Whatever next? Lib Dem MPs heckling Corbyn in the Commons, yelling comparisons to Neville Chamberlain?
It is possible to criticise British policy in Northern Ireland without praising the IRA. Criticising unwise actions of the Israeli government does not mean that one has to praise Hezbollah. Criticising the American air-strike does not imply that Assad is a good president. Corbyn diminishes his credibility by praising the IRA, Hezbollah and Assad. He may think that he is making clever debating points, but it looks to most people as if he totally lacks judgement.
On this occasion, it happens that I don’t think that it was wrong for America to make the air-strike anyway – http://www.patternsofpower.org/symbolic-air-strike-syria/
“Corbyn diminishes his credibility by praising the IRA, Hezbollah and Assad.”
I’m sure if Corbyn had said anything that could have been even remotely interpreted as praise of Assad, Nick Tyrone would have quoted it. You might as well accuse Charles Kennedy of having been a supporter of Saddam Hussein. As many fools did, of course.