As the last citizens of eastern Aleppo are evacuated, these innocent victims of war have also become caught in the crossfire of Labour’s civil war, used by the warwongering Blairites as a stick with which to beat Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour movement and stalwart of the anti-war movement in the UK.
In Syria, the people of Aleppo are the innocent victims of a seemingly never-ending civil war between the brutal Assad regime – supported by his Russian and Iranian allies – and the so-called “moderate” rebels, themselves composed in the main of various jihadist and fundamentalist armed groups and militias, backed by the Americans, British, Saudis, and Turks.
Back in Westminster, meanwhile, these same suffering civilians are caught in the crossfire of Labour’s civil war, cynically used by the Blairites as a stick with which to beat Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour movement and stalwart of the anti-war movement in the UK. Whilst attacking the left-wing Labour leader for his supposed “silence” over the crimes committed by Assad and Putin in Syria, however, the Labour right-wingers conveniently avoid the subject of their own warmongering and complicity in the crimes committed by British imperialism in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Can the real enemy please stand up?
Corbyn’s opponents were gifted the ammunition for their latest attacks by none other than Peter Tatchell – the prominent human rights campaigner and a former Labour left parliamentary candidate – and a group of activists from the Syria Solidarity UK campaign, who last Saturday (10th December) staged a protest during a talk by the Labour leader, condemning Corbyn for his “lack of action” in relation the tragedy in Aleppo.
Justifying their intervention and interruption of Corbyn’s speech, Tatchell and his fellow campaigners stated that “Aleppo is the Guernica of our age”, and therefore that “actions not words” were needed from the Labour leadership to “save civilians in Aleppo and other Syrian cities”.
Leaving aside the clear differences between the bombing of Guernica and that of Aleppo – with the opposition in the latter case being a far-cry from the romanticised notion of a democracy-loving bunch of freedom fighters, as Tatchell and others paint them to be – there is one similarity: in both cases, the people bearing responsibility for the murder of innocent civilians through their complicit silence were not the Labour opposition leaders, but the Tory imperialists in power.
Similarly, other “lefts” have tried to accuse Corbyn himself of hypocrisy, pointing to an inconsistency between his leading role in the mass movement against the 2003 Iraq war and his apparent “indifference” towards the plight of Syrians. But, again, there is a fundamental difference: in the former case, Corbyn was a rebellious backbench MP of the New Labour government that was taking the country into an illegal war on the basis of a “dodgy dossier” of lies; in the latter case, the bombing of Aleppo is being led not by the British government, nor its allies, but its international adversaries – Russia, Iran, and Syria.
As one writer in the Independent correctly notes:
“Tatchell held an “actions not words” poster. The last time I checked, Corbyn wasn’t in government. What has he got in his power, apart from words?
“Tatchell and others say they want Syria suspended from the United Nations, so why not take the protest to those who have the power to do this like the sitting UK Government? And why weren’t the demonstrators also gathered outside the Russian Embassy on Human Rights Day, voicing their criticism of Putin’s involvement in Syria, or at a Conservative Party event protesting about Aleppo? Instead, they decided to raise questions about Syria with the opposition leader while the cameras were rolling.
“You don’t have to be a banner-waving Corbyn supporter to realise that Tatchell’s actions were both wrong and misguided. Corbyn has consistently been on the right side of history on matters of human rights, fighting social injustices and inequality. He is one of the very few politicians who has spoken out about the dismal situation in Syria and the West’s failure to resolve the conflict humanely, which made the protest utterly futile.”
The suffering of the Syrian people is clearly a tragedy; and the actions of Putin and Assad are no doubt deplorable. But to those who call for Corbyn to “condemn, clearly and specifically, the actions of Assad and Russia in Syria”, we must ask: what good is hand-wringing, grandstanding, and speechifying to the citizens of Aleppo?
Tatchell and others may be well-meaning in their calls for more action from the Labour leadership over Syria. But as the old saying goes, the road to a very warm place is paved with good intentions; and by aiming their fire primarily at Corbyn rather than the Tory government, Tatchell and co. have – with such opportunistic stunts and misplaced criticism – only aided Corbyn’s opponents in the Parliamentary Labour Party, who would like nothing more than to oust one of the few honest, anti-war MPs from his position as leader of the opposition, and replace him with one of their own belligerent, bellicose kind.
The ignored horrors in Yemen
Corbyn’s critics have wasted no time in using Tatchell’s misguided antics as yet another opportunity to pillory the anti-war Labour leader, with John Woodcock MP – one of Corbyn’s most consistent detractors, leading the charge. “Families are being gassed as we bite our tongue about JC,” the Labour MP for Barrow and Furness tweeted; “no more. It is repugnant he can barely bring himself to criticise Russia even now.”
This anti-Corbyn MP, amongst others, in accusing the Labour leader of “silence” over Syria, of course conveniently ignores the endless statements from his office that, “Jeremy has always been clear on Syria and how we achieve peace. More bombing in Syria will not solve the problem. There has to be a negotiated political solution led by Syrians and backed by the main regional and international forces.” But, as they say, why let the facts ruin a good story.
Woodcock – a former chair of the Blairite faction, Progress – was quick also to join a defining chorus in attempting to use the ludicrous headline in the Stalinist daily, the Morning Star, describing the fall of Aleppo as a “liberation”, as yet more mud to sling at Corbyn, accusing him, his team, and Momentum of endorsing this warped analysis. “Did you ask for this sickening front page calling Russian slaughter ‘liberation’?”, the Labour right-winger rhetorically asked Corbyn’s press officer, Seamus Milne. “If you associate with this traitorous scum after this front page you’ve no place in our politics.”
Families are being gassed as we bite our tongue about JC; no more. It is repugnant he can barely bring himself to criticise Russia even now https://t.co/uupdK2fNUW
— John Woodcock (@JWoodcockMP) December 10, 2016
But those on Twitter were quick to point out the sickening hypocrisy of Woodcock and his fellow Blairites, who, whilst lambasting Corbyn over Syria, have quietly swept under the carpet their role in supporting British imperialism’s backing for the Saudi-led horrors in Yemen. As David Wearing, a researcher in UK-Middle Eastern relations and leading member of the Campaign Against Arms Trade, notes in the Guardian:
“Although the UN places it in the same category of severity as the crisis in Syria, Yemen receives a good deal less coverage…18 months on, much of Yemen lies in ruins. Schools, hospitals, homes and other civilian infrastructure have been bombed repeatedly by the coalition. At least 10,000 people have been killed, including about 4,000 civilians, mostly by coalition airstrikes…
“According to the UN World Food Programme, 14 million Yemenis are going hungry, half of them now tipping into outright starvation, an outcome long predicted by aid agencies. UN officials report that the [Saudi-led] coalition often blocks or delays deliveries of even explicitly UN-approved food and medical supplies.”
Meanwhile, it is clear that the Tory government is playing a key role in supporting the Saudis and their criminal bombing campaign against thousands of Yemeni civilians – not only in terms of providing logistical support, but also in selling the despotic Saudi monarchs over £3.3billion of arms, bombs, and missiles since the start of the “intervention”.
Less than two months ago, in the wake of the “accidental” bombing of a Yemeni funeral, in which over 140 people were killed and hundreds more injured (so much for British “logistical support”!), the Labour leadership attempted to push an extremely mild motion in Parliament, merely calling for the government to withdraw its backing for the Saudi coalition until an “independent” UN investigation had established whether the Saudi’s actions were in breach of international humanitarian law.
With his usual cant and bluster, Boris Johnson cynically justified the British backing of the Saudis in the ensuing parliamentary debate, asserting that, were the UK to withdraw their support,
“…we would be vacating a space that would rapidly be filled by other western countries who would happily supply arms with nothing like the same compunctions or criteria or respect for humanitarian law. And more importantly, we would at a stroke eliminate this country’s positive ability to exercise our moderating, diplomatic and political influence on a crisis where there are massive UK interests at stake.” (our emphasis)
Here we have the real ugly face of imperialism revealed. Supposedly the UK’s involvement in the war in Yemen is necessary on the grounds that the British government acts as a moderating influence on the Saudis! Given the mass murder and destruction that has already been carried out with Britain’s involvement, one can only imagine what terror Boris predicts would be seen if the Saudis were let off the leash. And what “interests”, one must ask, could the UK have in the region’s poorest country, other than to cosy up to their long-time autocratic allies, the Saudi royal family?
Despite the mild and meek demands contained within the motion proposed by Emily Thornberry, the Labour shadow foreign minister, the Blairites and Tories closed ranks to ensure its defeat. As Wearing continues:
“Presenting the motion in the Commons, Thornberry was subjected to a series of ill-judged interruptions from Labour MPs such as Kevan Jones, Toby Perkins and John Woodcock. Indeed, Thornberry received more vocal support in the chamber from the SNP contingent than from her own supposed comrades. According to subsequent reports, some Labour members even tried to work with their Tory counterparts in order to defeat their own party’s motion.”
In the end, the motion was defeated by 90 votes. But, scandalously, over 100 Labour MPs either abstained or failed to turn up to vote. Amongst them, one can see a significant crossover with “the 66” who also defied Corbyn in voting for bombing in Syria last December.
These disgusting hypocrites weep and wail about the tragedy in Aleppo; meanwhile, they refuse to support concrete (yet extremely mild) actions intended to alleviate the suffering in Yemen. As Thornberry herself correctly stated in the parliamentary debate over her motion, “When we say one thing about Russia and Aleppo but we say another thing about Riyadh and Yemen, what the rest of the world hears is hypocrisy and double standards.”
These ladies and gentlemen are more than happy to denounce Corbyn for his “silence” over Syria, accusing the Labour leader of being “soft” on Putin and Russia. And yet we see that these same respectable statesmen are willing to fall over one-another in their desperate attempts to fawn at the feet of the corrupt Saudi creatures in Riyadh and prove their reliability as representatives of British imperialism.
British imperialism’s impotence
Under pressure to be seen to be “doing something”, an emergency debate on the question of Aleppo was scheduled for Parliament on Tuesday afternoon of this week. But despite all the impassioned speeches and rallying cries, the only conclusion that could be drawn from the two-hour debate was that the British government is powerless to do anything.
Speaker after speaker implored for the government to act. But not one concrete suggestion was made as to what actual action could be taken.
Noting the small number of attendees at this emergency debate, a spokesperson for Amnesty International UK’s Syria Campaign, stated that, “Anyone in Syria who sees images of those empty green leather benches will be entitled to think that large numbers of British MPs have essentially given up on trying to help them.”
Whilst the vacant seats in the House of Commons on Tuesday might well reflect the genuine concern (or lack thereof) amongst a layer of out-of-touch MPs, it is far more a graphic demonstration of the impotence of British imperialism when it comes to modern-day foreign affairs. Despite all of the overblown and grandiose jingoism of Blairites such as Hilary Benn in last year’s debate over British bombing in Syria, the reality is that Whitehall was pushed to the side-lines in Syria from the start – a reminder of British imperialism’s reduced role on the world stage.
Politicians such as Benn and Boris might hark back nostalgically to the Empire and talk of “Great” Britain, but for a long time now the UK has been a second- (or even third-) rate power, no longer guaranteed a seat at the table. This has been manifestly visible in the case of Syria, where Johnson – and previous foreign secretaries – have been nothing more than mere mannequins and marionettes; the reliable poodles of US imperialism.
Indeed, the tremendous amounts of hot air produced in Parliament on Tuesday, and the Tory government’s genuine silence on Syria, are themselves a reflection of the enforced passivity of their puppet masters in Washington. As we have commented elsewhere, events in Syria have starkly shown up the relative decline and limitations of American imperialism, which – whilst attempting to maintain its alliances and spheres of influence in the Middle East – has been outmanoeuvred by Moscow at every step of the way.
The Tories and Blairites all call for action. But they have no proposals for what form this action might take. The option of a no-fly zone in Syria has been raised by many. But, as we have noted before, this demand is both utopian and reactionary: utopian because such a demand could not conceivably be enacted; and reactionary because it suggests that the salvation of the Syrian people lies in pinning their hopes to the interests of the imperialists.
The fact is that neither Obama – nor President-elect Trump – was, or is, willing to push for a no-fly zone…and for good reason. Numerous US military advisors and experts have outlined the impossibility of implementing a no-fly zone in Syria, both in terms of cost and logistics. As this report from two former US military officers outlines:
“Back in 2013, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey described a Syrian no-fly zone cost at $1 billion a month — triple the cost of current operations and a tenfold increase compared to Iraq’s no-fly zone. He also cautioned:
“‘We have learned from the past 10 years, however, that it is not enough to simply alter the balance of military power without careful consideration of what is necessary in order to preserve a functioning state. We must anticipate and be prepared for the unintended consequences of our action. Should the regime’s institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control.’”
Elsewhere, in discussing the possibility of a no-fly zone over Syria, the current Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford outlines the reality of what such a move would mean, stating categorically that, “Right now…for us to control all of the airspace over Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia. That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainty I’m not going to make.” In short: if Boris and the Blairites want to lead the charge in shooting down Russian planes, then they are welcome to – but don’t expect any assistance from the Americans!
Others have called on the UN to take action. But why, one must ask, would Russia – with its veto on the UN Security Council – vote for anything intended to tie its hands and weaken its position?
Of course, the inconvenience of getting official UN approval has never stopped US and British imperialism before. As the 2003 Iraq war clearly demonstrated, to paraphrase the ancient Greek philosopher Anacharsis, the United Nations and international law are like a spider’s web: the small get entangled; the powerful, meanwhile, rip right through it.
In the final analysis, the UN and its approval for “humanitarian” intervention are nothing but a fig leaf for the imperialist interests of the major powers. Appeals to the UN, therefore, are meaningless in the case of Syria, when Putin is calling the shots and the Western imperialists are unable to do anything but sit and watch.
Fight the imperialists on your own doorstep
The stomach-churning rhetoric of the Tories and Blairites reeks of hypocrisy from beginning to end. The latter conveniently forget that it is their own imperialist adventures – first in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq – that are responsible for the instability and chaos in the region today; for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians; and for creating the fertile conditions of poverty and sectarianism in which fundamentalism and terrorism thrive.
The former, meanwhile, cry crocodile tears about the brutality of Assad and Putin and the humanitarian disasters in Aleppo, whilst in the same breath denouncing the “swarms” who arrive on Britain’s shores, fleeing from the horrors of these wars. On the other side of the Channel, the French “Socialist” government razes the Calais “jungle” to the ground, scattering destitute families from Syria and elsewhere across Europe; in Westminster, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and others callously sit with their arms folded, refusing to do anything to help these refugees and victims of imperialist war.
The Blairites have wasted no time in joining this reactionary cacophony, banging the drum about the “pressures” of migration and the need for a “serious” stance on border controls, and so on. Such pandering to the xenophobia of UKIP and the most right-wing elements in the Tory party is nothing new for the Blairites, who have long put forward such backward and divisive slogans as “British jobs for British workers”. Who can forget Ed Miliband’s infamous monolithic limestone obelisk, engraved with the demand for “controls on immigration”? And yet, we are told, it is Corbyn who is apparently cold to the suffering of the poor and oppressed internationally!
Yes, the actions of Putin and Assad are horrific. But so too are those conducted every day by our own ruling classes and by the system that they defend. As Lenin once remarked in response to the pacifists during World War One, “capitalism is horror without end”. To those who understandably say we must “do something now”, we say: yes, we must begin organising, educating and agitating to overthrow capitalism.
Foreign policy is always and everywhere an extension of home policy. Why, therefore, would we ever trust “our” government to carry out a “humanitarian” intervention abroad, when this same government is attacking the working class here? At root, the responsibility for the current mess in the Middle East lies with the Western imperialists and their irresponsible interventions of recent decades – not to mention the crimes of these same imperialists in carving up the world for over a century before in an attempt to divide and rule.
Even today, the most reactionary forces in the region – the Saudis, the Erdogan regime, and the Israeli state – are all supported by US and British imperialism in a-thousand-and-one ways. Without such support, these bastions of reaction would crumble in a matter of weeks or days.
Our struggle, therefore, is not against this or that country or leader. The world is not divided between the “good” imperialists and the “bad” imperialists. Putin’s Russia and May’s Tories are two sides of the same capitalist coin. Our struggle is against the capitalist system which produces all these evils.
The fight against this system begins by asserting our own class independence; exposing the lies, hypocrisy, and real motivations of the imperialists on our own doorstep; and fighting for a socialist government at home to act as a beacon of light to the working class, the poor, and the oppressed across the world.
