The Tragedy of Syria

It is cruelly fitting that one of the acknowledged cradles of civilization is now a showroom for the cruelties, irrationalities, and injustices of the modern capitalist world. 

At various times, Syria was part of the lands that were widely admired for their enlightened governance, tolerance, and economic development. 

Today, Syria is a wasteland, divided into parcels, and occupied by alien forces that show no regard for the country's legacy or the unity and well-being of its people. 

After four hundred years of reasonably stable, tolerant, and peaceable existence under Ottoman rule, the people of the country now known as Syria experienced the heavy hand of European imperialism. With the Sykes-Picot agreement, Syria became the “responsibility” of France after World War I, existing essentially as a French colony with its artificial boundaries established by European powers.

Understandably, the colonial subjects resisted. As it always does, the anti-colonial struggle provided the impetus for consolidating a nation in a space where a country never existed. As with the seminal anti-colonial victory in what is now the US, the fight against the French was an essential condition to the forging of the Syrian nation-state. Nation-building emerges from and advances from the struggle against domination, for independence.

But it was not a sufficient condition. After World War II, when France proved unable to maintain its colonies, the new Syria had to fulfill other difficult conditions of nation-building. Decolonization left the scars of oppression-- social, political, and economic backwardness.

Without independent political organizations and well-established institutions, the military-- made up of anti-colonial fighters, tribal militias, even former French collaborators-- served as a unifying force. Politics was conducted through the often-violent clash of military factions. Countering this chaos was the impact of Arab nationalist and Arab socialist secular trends emerging throughout the Middle East. Ba’athism and Nasserism were two progressive influences tempering Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism, and the complacency of feudal and primitive capitalist economies.

Concurrent with aid from the Soviet Union and the guarantee of Syrian sovereignty against imperialist aggression, the alliance of the military, the Ba’ath Party, and the Communist Party consolidated and took a leftward turn, strengthening their hand against the backward elements. This progressive development in the energy-rich Middle East did not go unnoticed by the United States and its then-designated local police agents: Israel and Iran. 

In the ensuing years, Syria continued to struggle for national unity, agrarian reform, and modernization under the 30-year presidency of Hafez Al-Assad. Assad brought a measure of stability and peace, while imperialism encouraged and materially supported the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalists to undermine these secular developments. 

Typically, European and US ideologues railed against the fragile state, condemning its failure to embrace modern capitalist institutions while these same ideologues were encouraging feudal jihadists to rebel against secularism. 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the death of the elder Assad, the tenuous progress of Syria, its independence, and its unity were weakened. Under the leadership of the younger, less visionary Bashir al-Assad, without any powerful allies, and with active and determined plotters in Washington, the future of Syria was in doubt. Assad’s flirtation with market economics and privatization brought his regime no respite from imperialist machinations.

In 2011, protests against Assad’s rule were co-opted by foreign security services. Through the auspices of the CIA, through its vast network of ready and willing jihadists, and armed with weapons shipped from the overthrown government of Libya, a brutal proxy war was launched. Neo-Ottoman Turkey threw its own jihadists into the fight. And the US armed and unleashed Kurdish nationalists to further pressure the Assad government and serve US interests.

What the mainstream media called “a Revolution and the Syrian Civil War” was, in fact, a conflict of proxies and of foreign intervention. In response to Turkish and US meddling and to the arrival of hordes of foreign jihadists, Hezbollah militias and Iranian and Russian forces came to the assistance of the weak Assad government forestalling the chaos that follows forcible regime change.  

As the war reached somewhat of a stalemate, Assad stood in Damascus, ruling the little that was left of the country’s infrastructure, housing, economy, and territorial integrity. US Marines occupied a portion of Syria with its oil resources. Kurds ruled in another part of the country under US protection. The US’s NATO ally, Turkey-- hostile to the Kurds-- ruled in another part of Syria, supporting their favored brand of head-chopping jihadists. Israel took advantage of weakened foes and occupied a large slice of Syria nearer to Damascus, while destroying all Syrian military assets in Southern Syria. 

If this reverse of nation-building, this nation-degrading process seems familiar, it should. It resembles all too well the willful, post-Cold War, systematic destruction of fragile states constructed around multiple ethnicities and enjoying a measure of national independence. Without the international leverage of a socialist bloc, led by the powerful Soviet Union, the imperialist bloc disposed of contrarian states like Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, usually by fomenting ethnic strife or supporting elite demands. Failing states throughout Africa and Asia bear similar scars, inflicted by great powers bent on strengthening their spheres of interest, as France attempts in sub-Saharan Africa. 

In late 2024, Turkey unleashed its own stable of radical, fundamentalist head-choppers, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, against the Assad regime from its lair in Idlib province. The demoralized, spent forces of Assad’s military were swiftly overwhelmed. Despite designation as a “terrorist group” by the UN (and the US), HTS was heralded by most of the US and European mainstream media as victorious freedom fighters. Reporters flocked to Damascus-- after staying far away for years, while reporting from Beirut and the US embassy-- to “prove” the evil of the Assad regime. Easily duped by local opportunists, much of the reportage collapsed as facts and evidence came forward.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of HTS anointed himself the new Syrian head of state, adopted a proper Western suit, shaved his beard, and pronounced a new era of peace and harmony, while outlawing political parties, postponing a new constitution, and cancelling elections until far off in the future. Such is the new Syrian Democracy.

But public relations cannot restrain the blood lust of the fundamentalist head-choppers. In 2025, HTS elements began a vengeance campaign against Baa’ath cadre, former military leaders, and religious “infidels,” killing and attacking civilians in Alawite and Christian villages. 

Understandably, a new resistance is emerging. Bizarrely, EU authorities blame the massacres on those resisting HTS.

No doubt at the urging of its foreign sponsors (especially the US), HTS and the Kurds were herded into a cooperative agreement in March that includes the merging of its “military institutions” -- a move that hopes to strengthen their hand against future Syrian resistance and present an image of unity to the rest of the world. The Kurds give the US greater influence at the expense of the Turks.

The last pages of the Syrian tragedy are yet to be written.

There are lessons to be learned.

The post-Soviet era has emboldened a ruthless, cruel imperialism. Without the threat of Soviet power to present a counterforce, the US, NATO, and other powers are free to impose their will on other states, including taking their own rivalries to the brink of World War. Few remember that the then-real threat of Soviet intervention, stopped the Israelis from passing beyond the Golan Heights and marching to Damascus during the Six Day War-- a principled act of international solidarity.

As a corollary, it is impossible to fail to note that there are no similar counterbalancing forces today. There have been no political, economic, or military powers demonstrably committed to a principled defense of weaker states threatened by imperialist aggression since the Cuban and Soviet defense of Angola and the defeat of South African apartheid aggression in the 1980s.

That reality is not only a tribute to the socialist internationalism of the past, but a sobering message to those on the left who interpret the realignment of great powers-- the so-called tendency to multipolarity-- as a new kind of anti-imperialism. The experience of Syria-- left on its own to defend its integrity and sovereignty against the agents of backwardness and great-power interests-- speaks to the impotence of the so-called BRICS block. Issuing protests, resolutions, and condemnations is no substitute for action or material aid. Russian support, once so vital to Assad’s defense, failed to rise against HTS and is now offered shamelessly to its former foe. 

Capitalist alliances around spheres of influence or temporary common interests are far removed from principled anti-imperialism, a stance only possible apart from the logic of capitalist competition. Anti-imperialism is a principle, not a self-interested calculation.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Distractions

For many in the US and Europe, a cynical call for violence posturing as the wrath of the righteous will readily produce a distraction from the urgent issues of our time. Judging by the initial protests of last Friday’s Trump/May/Macron aggression against Syria, far too many have fallen for this hypocritical, dishonest maneuver.

For Theresa May, Conservative UK prime minister, an attack on Syria promises to add to her effort to claw back from the disastrous Brexit vote that wounded her party. Anti-Russia hysteria, unprincipled charges of anti-Semitism lodged against Labour opponent Jeremy Corbyn, and now a missile-administered scolding of Syria’s president, Assad, help her in the polls or, at least, that’s her calculation.

Early in March, Emmanuel Macron’s poll numbers sank to the lowest level since his election. His ongoing attack on French workers and his enthusiasm for bombing Syria are meant to bolster his “tough guy” image. Like May, Macron has little else but austerity to offer workers; hence, manufacturing threats promises to distract.

Trump’s approval rate has taken a nose dive in recent weeks as well. Battered from all sides, Trump needed some love from the war hawks populating both parties. A muscular move against Assad would also signal Trump’s defiance of Putin, the alleged “devil’s handmaiden.”

Of course that didn’t win over the MSNBC/NPR/CNN crowd, the Democrats’ über alles. Schumer and Pelosi saw the trap: the choice between praising Trump for his attack on Syria or rejecting aggression. They, along with most other elected Democrats, performed an exercise of Clintonian triangulation: ‘we want to hit Assad more than anyone, but Trump should have allowed us to call for military action.’

For MSNBC’s Trump-reviling star, Rachel Maddow, Trump bombed Syria for the wrong reasons-- a case of “wagging the dog”-- hoping to distract critics from his domestic problems. She badgers her war-hawk guests to agree that Trump’s war on Assad was not authentic. Implicit is the notion that Trump could have established more credibility by raining greater death and destruction and further baiting the Russian bear.

Easy distraction has led apparently sober, morally-grounded people to overlook the telling coincidence of an alleged outrageous gas attack with the imminent defeat of the so-called rebels in Douma. They see no suspicious connection between Trump’s surprising announcement of US troop withdrawals and a provocation to revoke that decision. And they see no distraction from the contemporaneous cross-border slaughter of unarmed Palestinians by the Israeli military.

They see no calculation in scheduling the bombardment of Syria on Friday, the day before the arrival of the investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) who might bring some light to the charges of chemical weapons’ use. And they are too distracted to be puzzled by the US military plan to destroy the facilities alleged to contain deadly gases and consequently risk harming innocent Syrian civilians.

Never mind that the US and its allies could rely upon no more than cell phone pictures and telephone interviews (so called “public source” information) to evidence the claims of a gas attack. It’s an astonishing fact that even though the “rebels” are supposedly democratically-minded allies who welcome CIA aid, no Western news service dares to actively cover their side by employing reporters on the ground. This has been the case with the US’s Islamic fundamentalist allies since CBS’s Dan Rather faked a visit to Afghanistan decades ago. The commitment of “freedom fighters” to “freedom of the press” seems to be wanting.

Oddly enough, the “authoritarian” Assad government welcomes Western journalists, though they-- excepting a CBS news reporter-- prefer the friendly confines of hotels in Beirut, Ankara, and Amman where they have easy access to press releases from the US embassy.

An affinity for distraction leads very many major media corporations to place complete, unthinking trust in UK-based reportage from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It goes unnoted that the Observatory is a one-man show performed by an Assad-hating shopkeeper in Coventry who refuses to share his methodology, but admits to relying on his friends and acquaintances in Syria. Amnesty International, with its usual smug casuistry, judges the Observatory to be reliable, though it bases its evaluation on the same indirect, patchy evidence.

Anywhere but in Syria, these claims, based on second- and third-hand reports, anecdotes, and social media, would fail any and all journalistic smell tests. Imagine NBC News basing coverage of violence in Chicago on the network of contacts of an amateur sleuth in San Francisco.

Film critic Louis Proyect interjects, in an oddly timed article on Counterpunch, that a website dubbed Bellingcat “is perhaps the only place where you can find fact-based reporting on chemical attacks in Syria.” A quick look at the website will reveal some more UK-based amateur sleuths assembling second- and third-hand accounts and social media reports.

True to his film critic credentials, he likens the Syrian “rebels” to “the Arab version of John Steinbeck’s Joad family,” a bizarre innocuousness for the Douma-based, brutal Jaysh al-Islam that former Secretary of State John Kerry once characterized as a sub-group of ISIL. Promptly, the Obama administration was forced to “correct” Kerry, who was ignorant of the head-choppers’ rehabilitation.

Proyect chose the exact moment-- when the honest left was scrambling to mount some public opposition to war on Syria-- to attack the left for its skepticism of the official account, an historically justifiable skepticism given such devastatingly consequential deceptions as the Tonkin Gulf resolution and the 2003 weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco. The military and the security services lie. Skepticism is the only antidote to gullibility.

The one NGO that actually claims direct reportage in Syria, the opposition-based Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC) has had its Douma office attacked numerous times by Jaysh al-Islam, forcing its active reporters out of the area.

Unmentioned by the tunnel-vision media, strong circumstantial evidence, Red Crescent confirmation, Kurdish accusations, and a near self-confession has pointed to Jaysh al-Islam employing chlorine gas in April of 2016.

In our era of Entertainment-Tonight-style distractions, of Trump’s sex life, of twitter-duels, of anonymous sources and calculated leaks, a principled, wise statement is a rare and welcome event. Tulsi Gabbard, the Representative from Hawaii addressed Trump with the following:

The people of Syria want peace more than anything else in the world. Attacking Syria will not bring their war-torn country any closer to peace. U.S. military action against Syria will simply escalate and prolong the war, resulting in more senseless death, destruction, and suffering...

If you are truly concerned about the suffering of the Syrian people, then you must do all you can to bring about peace. A US military attack against Syria will expand and escalate this war, increasing their suffering and causing more death, more refugees, and fewer resources to invest in rebuilding our own communities right here at home…

I call upon you to resist the loud calls of war and instead wield the power of the Presidency to help bring peace to the people of Syria, their devastated country, and the region.

Gabbard’s appeal is a stroke of sanity and maturity in a frightening rush to war lubricated by an unprecedented campaign of mass distraction, by the marketing of a Marvel-comic foreign policy.

Greg Godels 
zzsblogml@gmail.com

Tutoring Trump

After agreeing that the US attack upon a Syrian air force base constituted a violation of international law, a violation of Syrian sovereignty, an Ivy League law professor told NPR that he believes that the premeditated strike was justified nonetheless. The professor likened it to running a stop sign or a stop light in an emergency.

This is the level of tortured hypocrisy to which US intellectual elites have sunk.

Across the corporate media spectrum similar irresponsible “justifications” dominate the conversation, including from the center left. Some, like the once discredited, but still indulged, Brian Williams of MSNBC, border on the crazed, invoking songster Leonard Cohen to marvel at the “beautiful” cruise missile launches.

Within the two-party political circle, a similar consensus welcomes or approves the missile attack. The corporate Republican leadership, including Senate leader McConnell and House leader Ryan, join the corporate Democratic leaders, Senator Schumer and Senator Feinstein, in their approval. Senate hawks McCain, Graham, and Rubio, who had earlier criticisms of Trump, hail the attack. McCain saw Trump’s leadership of the aggression as “presidential.”  

This sounds eerily like the drumbeat accompanying previous US aggressions against countries that refuse to honor the imperial playbook. An equally ready consensus emerged with recent US military violations of sovereignty in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraq, and in Libya, not to mention numerous uninvited covert actions throughout the world.

The Sales Effort

Sadly, the US establishment has succeeded in selling aggression as “humanitarian intervention,” the modern equivalent of nineteenth-century “civilizing the savages.” As this selling job has gotten more sophisticated and the perpetrators have grown more successful, the need for allies has declined. The US used the UN as a cover after the demise of the Soviet Union; it contrived a “coalition of the willing” to mask aggression in the Middle East; and it hid behind the NATO shield in recent years. Today, it acts unilaterally, brazenly.

Making full use of the compliant corporate media, naive human rights organizations, and corporate and government-funded NGOs, imperialism relies upon opportune “incidents” that cry out for sympathy and prompt a call for action.

Of course, provocation is not really a new ploy. It has been part of the imperialist tool box since the dawn of empire. The US introduction to contrived provocation coincided with its entry into imperialist competition: the sinking of the battleship Maine. With the help of Hearst and Pulitzer, icons of US journalism, the incident “justified” the US military embarking on a colonial mission against Spain.

More recently, the phony Tonkin Bay incident notoriously served to gather public opinion behind a massive escalation of the war against Vietnam.

And of course, there was the “weapons of mass destruction” hoax that, thanks to the media frenzy generated by Judith Miller, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, led to war and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

In the post-Soviet era, “humanitarian intervention” replaced imperialism’s Cold War strategy of fighting national liberation under the banner of “anti-Communism.” Today, US imperialism uses a multi-faceted approach: subversion, covert support for discontented “democrats” and surrogate “freedom fighters,” and naked intervention.

The corporate media is only too happy to fan the flames, shamelessly turning national leaders into “brutal dictators” regardless of the frequency of elections or their apparent legitimacy. That same media instantly converts religious zealots into righteous democrats and neo-Nazis into human rights activists. Any country that strengthens its military against threats of imperialist intervention becomes a threat to its neighbors or dangerous aggressors. And imperialist military maneuvers or buildups are merely responses to belligerency. All that is needed beyond the propaganda campaign is a provocation to spark a policy shift or military adventure.

Strike the Match!

Two recent events--the death of Kim Jong-nam and the alleged gas attack on a Syrian village--have disrupted processes that had promised to lower international tensions, derail the prospects of further conflict, and disrupt imperialist plans. One process held out hope that US-DPRK relations would improve, opening the door to reconciliation on the Korean peninsula. The other offered an early end to the war devastating Syria and its people.

Both processes were interrupted in a manner that should generate doubt and suspicion on the part of any reasonable person. Both processes were thwarted by “incidents” or provocations that were instantly inflated and characterized by a corporate media that follow a line uncannily identical with that crafted by imperialism.

In February, Kim Jong-nam died under suspicious circumstances in an airport in Malaysia. Kim traveled on a DPRK passport and was purportedly the half-brother of Kim Jong-il, the leader of DPRK. Immediately, a narrative circulated in the Western press that attributed the death to agents of the DPRK. Because of the haste in reporting the conspiracy, parts of the narrative had to be replaced, patched, or modified as questions arose. No independent investigation was permitted; nor was the DPRK allowed access or possession of the body of its national until much later. Questions arose over why security agencies of the ROK were engaged at the onset of the incident. And clear indications of KCIA invention loomed over the most glaring discrepancies in the story.

But most telling were the circumstances. The President of the ROK, Park Geun-hye, an anti-DPRK hardliner and US puppet, was about to be removed from office because of corruption and massive demonstrations for her impeachment in response to that corruption. Waiting in the wings was the likely new leader, an opposition politician known for his commitment to steps toward reconciliation with the DPRK. Few US citizens knew of the large southern Korean reconciliation movement because of the veritable news blackout of anything placing DPRK in a favorable light.

At the same time, a hysterical media campaign was popularizing the “North Korean military threat” and the US was rushing its sophisticated THAAD missile system to the ROK, a direct provocation of the DPRK and the PRC. The US moved quickly to take advantage of Park’s waning days and the impolitic of removing the missiles once they were there. The Kim affair conveniently added to the argument that the DPRK could not be trusted, part of a blatant effort to thwart any attempt at North/South reconciliation.

More recently, the alleged gas attack in Syria occurred in the midst of considerable hope that the war would be coming to a close. Assad and his allies had turned the war against the US, Salafist, and Turkish-sponsored opposition as well as their mercenaries. The Trump administration made noises about accepting Assad’s continued governance in Syria. Peace talks were continuing amidst renewed hopes and there was an air of optimism about forthcoming talks between the Trump administration and the Russians.

But since the first of the year, a campaign had been waging against elements of the foreign policy of the Trump administration. Charges of unsavory contacts with Russia took on a relentless public life, spread by political foes and the media, and fueled by carefully placed leaks and innuendo by the security services. Despite little evidence of anything out of the ordinary or seriously compromising, the association of Trump with Russian machinations quickly reached hysterical proportions. What began as a diversion from the exposed chicanery and electoral failure of the Democratic Party gathered momentum and transformed into a broad attack on Trump’s deviations from the ruling class playbook. The Russia-baiting was served up to discredit Trump’s renegade isolationist, America First policy. Trump had drifted off the reservation with his hands-off foreign policy, his live-and-let-live approach to Russia, Syria, and the DPRK.

To get him back on the reservation a provocation was needed. It was found or contrived with the alleged Syrian government gas attack on civilians.

The Soft Coup

Whatever really happened in the village in Syria will likely never be known. Like the death of Kim in Malaysia, any hope of an objective investigation has passed with the politically charged rush to judgement on the part of Western leaders and their media shills. Truth was a victim of opportunity. Both events, as depicted in the Western media, were better seen as carefully crafted, politically useful theater than as part of the fabric of reality.

The last glimmer of truth-based journalism disappeared from the corporate media when the work of the US’s greatest investigative journalist was exiled. Since 2015, when Seymour Hersh’s article on Syria could find no US publisher inclined to publish it, US mainstream international reporting has been universally politically motivated, tainted by bias, and, frankly, ignorant. Hersh was celebrated when he exposed the crimes of My Lai or Abu Ghraib, but he is no longer wanted when he dares to question today’s foreign policy consensus. One finds more truth in celebrity gossip reporting than in international reporting datelined from a comfortable foreign city with a media-friendly US embassy available.

The upshot of a lapdog media is the readiness of media puppies to do their master’s bidding.

Since Trump’s election, the media has once again served loyally as the instrument of the US ruling class. It should be no secret that all of the candidates but Trump were carefully vetted by that same ruling class; while they all played different hands, they recognized the same rules. Trump did not always play by those rules, he didn’t play nice, and he had some outlier ideas. And the media has set out to punish him for his audacity.

With his victory, alarms went off. Plans were hatched to force Trump back in line. The security services and the corporate media collaborated to realize those plans. With ruling class fear of a measured position on Russia, a tale of intrigue and secret plotting was created out of whole cloth. The old Russian bear-baiting strategy was brought out of retirement and the game was on!

The war rages in the Trump administration between those who cling to the isolationist position promised in Trump’s campaign and those who urge him to return to the reservation and embrace the ruling class line of belligerence towards Russia and the stoking of aggression in the Middle East and Asia. Clearly, the purge of Flynn and the removal of Bannon from the National Security Council paved the way for the attack on Syria and the saber-rattling in and near the Korean peninsula. For the moment, the corporate, establishment faction has the upper hand. Son-in-law Jared Kushner, trusted military advisor H. R. McMaster, and reliable corporate boss, Gary Cohn, former president and COO of Goldman Sachs, appear to be steering Trump back to the ruling class mainstream and away from a sane foreign policy.

The retreat from sanity owes much to US liberal elites who shamefully stoked and continue to stoke the anti-Russia hysteria that presses Trump to attack Syria. As the PRC news service, Xinhua, noted, the attack on Syria was meant to send the message that Trump’s administration was not “pro-Russia”.

How the battle will conclude is unsure. Rumors abound that Trump will exile Bannon (and Priebus) and put Goldman Sach’s Cohn in charge at the White House. That would constitute a solid victory for the ruling class-- ironically, for the policies of Hillary Clinton. Given that businessman Trump has no principles-- only ambition-- that is not an unlikely outcome.

Through the turmoil of the last few months, a soft coup has been unleashed, a coup meant to bring Trump back in line with the ruling class foreign policy consensus, an imperialist game plan. In the waning days of his administration, Barack Obama acknowledged this game plan. He noted the intense pressures from the ”humanitarian interventionists” and their dominance among the foreign policy establishment. They don’t wear the badges “liberal” or “conservative.” Nor do they owe allegiance to “Republican” or “Democrat.” Rather they represent a ruling class consensus.

While some leeway in execution is permitted, the goals are non-negotiable. Trump threatened to modify those goals. He is being schooled in the rules.

Behind the “Socialist” Masquerade

Ashley Smith recently wrote an essay (Anti-imperialism and the Syrian Revolution) ostensibly about Syria and imperialism but more properly understood as a rekindling and re-statement of anti-Communist “leftism.” Smith, an ideologue of the International Socialist Organization, unveils his true target when he inveighs against the “Stalinists”: “Stalinist groups like the Workers World Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization…”

Not content with these examples, Smith, in McCarthy-like fashion, feels the necessity to name further names. He sees the UK’s Stop the War coalition as also duped by the Stalinists, along with the US United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). Jill Stein of the Green Party and her Vice Presidential partner, Ajamu Baraka, are similarly infected with the “Stalinist” virus.

Laughably, he ominously links the recent bold, fact-finding mission to Syria organized by the US Peace Council to the “American Communist Party,” an association meant to conjure up the specter of Stalin; but it is an untenable association with a moribund CPUSA that has long distanced itself from “Stalinism” and the Soviet legacy with a fervor equal to the US Trotskyist groups.

Without re-visiting the old ideological wars (Trotsky has been dead for 76 years, Stalin for 63 years, and the Soviet Union for 25 years), it is nonetheless useful to point out a common characteristic shared by US Trotskyist organizations: they invariable live and breathe anti-Communism. Since the Cold War began, they traded on their distance from the “enemies” of Western Imperialism. The grip that these groups often had on middle class youth was predicated on the denial of Red connections. For a university student, the McCarthyite stigma of Communism could be evaded by joining an anti-Communist organization that proclaimed that its anti-Communism was even more radical than Communism!

US Trotskyism is part of the “Yes, but…” left. Yes, Communism, Stalinism, Maoism, Marxism-Leninism, etc. etc. are bad, but we’re not like that! Like you, we’re against them, too! We’re the unthreatening, friendly advocates for change… In the Cold War period and after, this was a safe tactic to appear radical without poking the bear of repression. Of course it didn’t always fool those entrusted with thwarting even the most lame rejection of capitalism.

Communists victimized by Cold War repression often joked that a US socialist was someone without the guts to be a Communist. The easy assimilation of much of the Trotskyist intellectual apparatus into the anti-Communist hierarchy and the subsequent entry of many into ruling circles certainly underscores the opportunism of this tactic.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, US Trotskyism has been in crisis. With the departure of a foil of sheer evil, the appeal of anti-Communist radicalism has lost its punch. Apart from the intellectual Neanderthals serving Eastern European reaction (sponsored by the New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, and a few other inveterate anti-Communist organs), the epithet “Stalinist!” means little in current discourse.

Ashley Smith hopes to revive its relevance for the twenty-first century. He sets out to buttress Trotskyism as a thin and tortured alternative to the anti-imperialism of the “Stalinists.” As with his Cold War predecessors, Smith hopes to trade on distancing Trotskyism from the rivals or antagonists of US and European Imperialism. In the absence of a Soviet Union, capitalist Russia will suffice as the source of evil. And Syria’s Assad will play the role of the bloodthirsty despot-- a mini-Stalin-- in this Trotskyist fantasy. Smith offers an unvarnished choice: “Which side are you on? Do you support the popular struggle against dictatorship and for democracy? Or are you with Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime, his imperial backer Russia, his regional ally Iran and iran’s proxies like Hezbollah from Lebanon?”

It is breathtaking how simplistically, but presumptuously Smith characterizes the Syrian tragedy. It is equally astonishing to recognize how wrong he gets it.

To be so blind to sources of information apart from Western reporters in Beirut, Amman, and Ankara, to rely principally upon a London-based, unfiltered, and non-independent anecdote collector like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and to credit US and European sponsored “revolutionaries” implies an indifference to the pursuit of truth.

Whatever grievances Syrians may have had against Assad, it is hardly credible to hail an armed struggle that began literally weeks after the alleged peaceful demonstrations that Smith praises. No insurrection has ever proceeded so swiftly and effectively against security services and a modern army without outside assistance. We now know from revelations exposed by the US media’s fixation on the Benghazi fiasco that the CIA was vigorously engaged in shipping weaponry to Syria from stockpiles snatched from its Libyan venture. We know that regimes on the Arabian Peninsula were equally vigorous in supplying military equipment and recruiting volunteers.

Even US and Western European sources concede that the most numerous and most effective anti-Assad fighters are not democrats or reformists, but radical fundamentalists driven by religious fervor and feudal ideology, hardly the idealistic revolutionaries portrayed by Smith. In fact, US and European advisors complain of the difficulties of vetting anti-Assad forces sufficiently credible to receive advanced weapons. The few recipients of US supplied anti-tank missiles have displayed a troubling propensity to pass them on to the worst of the worse jihadist.

Smith shows an enormous conceit, from his secure perch, joining Western politicians in intuiting the sentiment of the Syrian people. Cavalierly dismissing the Syrian elections, he-- along with the Western media-- somehow divines that most Syrians hate Assad and that the opposition overflows with democratic, progressive sentiment. Where we have evidence of an independent vote-- for example, the May, 2014 national election vote of Syrian refugees in Lebanon-- the Washington Post’s rabid anti-Assad reporter, Liz Sly, conceded that uncoerced refugees supported Assad.

One has to notice that, unlike previous chapters of the so-called “Arab Spring,” there are no embedded Western reporters recording the march of democracy or the defeat of tyranny. Cannot CNN find any democrats in the Syrian opposition? Are there no freedom-loving fighters for NBC reporters to interview?

Of course the Assad regime’s invitation to allow Western reporters goes cynically unaccepted. To find on-the-spot reporting from Syrian battle zones, one has to turn to Lizzie Phelan, an independent UK journalist whose frequent front line footage appears most often on RT (her recent 20-minute cab ride through Aleppo gives a decidedly different picture of the city from that rendered by Western media reporting a Syrian “Stalingrad” from afar).

Smith does not hesitate to embrace the Libyan debacle as a pro-democracy revolution as well. One would think that the disastrous destabilization of Libya would serve as a sobering tonic for Smith’s fantasies. As with Syria, the pro-democracy revolutionaries were largely a figment of the imagination of US and European politicians and journalists, a group that our erstwhile “socialist” seems happy to join. But that is not just my opinion or the opinion of other “Stalinists.” On Wednesday, September 14, the UK parliament’s cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee released a report on the UK’s 2011 intervention in Libya. According to The Wall Street Journal, the committee found that the engagement was “based on ‘serious erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding’... [and] failed to identify that the rebels included a significant Islamist element and that the [Gadhafi] threat to civilians was overstated.” (my italics) It is striking that the UK government can shed its illusions, but Ashley Smith clings to his.

It is no accident that Ashley Smith’s long essay makes only a passing mention of workers or class. Like most US Trotskyist organizations, ISO draws support significantly from the petty-bourgeoisie. Thus, the question of workers and their fate never arises in his argument. There is no notice taken of the Syrian General Federation of Trade Unions, a supporter of Assad, an opponent of class collaboration, a leader in Arab trade unionism, and a pillar of the class struggle trade unionism of the World Federation of Trade Unions. There is no attention to either the opinions of workers or the effect of a violent insurrection upon the working class. These issues are of little count for one who calls for all to “collaborate with Syrian revolutionaries” who exist only in the minds of political romantics.

Rather than concern himself with the fate of Syria’s working class, Smith prefers to repeat the US and European media’s obsession with civilian-targeted barrel bombs and poison gasses, claims that have defied objective verification. But he exceeds Western fear-mongering by attributing the entire UN estimate of 400,000 deaths in the war to “Assad’s massacre.”

Recently, a delegation organized by the US Peace Council visited Syria and met with a number of Syrians, their organizations, and even oppositionists. They left the US with the notion that Syrians should decide the fate of Syria. They returned with the same notion, but even more strongly felt. But, in addition, they returned with the view that events in Syria are far more complicated than the simplistic picture presented by the US State Department. They returned with the idea that peace in Syria would not be secured through the intervention of foreign powers or by supporting media-manufactured fantasies. Unfortunately, many on the left like Ashley Smith and some in the more conservative peace groups do not want to hear the Peace Council report, preferring to embrace the self-serving constructions of the regime-changers.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

US Imperialism’s Failed Tactics

US imperialism and its allies learned a hard lesson from their unsuccessful adventure in Vietnam. Escalating US troop involvement to nearly half a million serving at the war’s peak, drawing on forced enlistment (conscription) to rotate nearly three million personnel serving throughout the war, and incurring over 200,000 casualties proved to be a politically destabilizing, consensus-challenging endeavor.

Military planners recognized that unless they were able to generate a broad consensus for war or guarantee a short, decisive duration, the draft risked a politically volatile backlash. Consequently, they opted for developing a volunteer army and a war-friendly culture to legitimize its use.

But they drew an even more important conclusion. Where imperialism fought a foe defending its homeland, the costs were usually far too great for the US public to tolerate. Certainly US engagement in the world-wide, anti-fascist war of 1939-1945 enjoyed unwavering popular support. But US forces never fought on Japanese soil and only briefly in a crippled Germany.

When engaged in supporting a rump regime in Korea, the US military achieved, at best, a stalemate. The same boots-on-the-ground approach in Vietnam collapsed before a people deeply resentful of US occupiers.

After Vietnam, imperialist war planners devised a tactic of relying more and more upon surrogates. Understanding that local populations furiously opposed foreign occupiers, the US sought to impose its objectives by creating and supporting mercenary forces who could claim, at least tenuously, to local status. From supporting UNITA or FNLA in Angola to creating, arming, and aiding the Contra movement in Nicaragua, the US preferred waging aggression with surrogate forces. An effective, massive propaganda effort “legitimized” the client armies as “freedom fighters.”

Probably the most successful use of the post-Vietnam tactic was in Afghanistan, where US covert services armed a reactionary tribal opposition to destabilize a secular, modern government and, as a result, gave a decisive, strong impetus to an emergent Islamic fundamentalist war against secularism of all kinds. The jihadist movement found its legs, its confidence as surrogates against an urban-based Afghanistan government supported by the Soviet Union, then a bulwark against US imperialism.

After the demise of the Soviet state, the US cautiously employed its “professionalized” and volunteer military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and once more in Iraq. Still, military planners hoped to quickly train a surrogate force and just as quickly evacuate US ground forces, leaving client states with militaries sufficiently armed and motivated to crush any domestic resistance to a US-friendly regime.

While the tactic held the promise of minimizing domestic resistance by using a compliant media to construct the false narrative of democratic change and humanitarian intervention and while the tactic hoped to generate tolerable US casualties and minimal material costs, resistance movements once again proved to be far more determined, and stability far more elusive, than the best minds of the military or covert services imagined.

Fourteen years in Afghanistan and twelve years of propping up a client state in Iraq, manufacturing a failed state in Libya, and sparking a devastating civil war in Syria are testament to a failed policy.

More importantly, the failure is part of a continuous, irreversible decline in US imperialism’s ability to impose its will in a world of stiffening anti-imperialist resistance and growing inter-imperialist rivalries.

Nothing underlines this new reality more than the latest events in Afghanistan and Syria.

Despite a massive concentration of weaponry, superior pay, and the best US training, the Afghan surrogate army suffered its worst defeat ever at the hands of the Taliban in the siege and occupation of Kunduz. All reports indicate that the Taliban forces were inferior in numbers and weapons and that the US-trained government forces had little stomach for the fight.

US officials have been obliged to announce a delay in the exit of troops from Afghanistan in the face of this defeat. President Obama has decided to pass on the Afghanistan quagmire to the next President, just as President Bush passed it on to him.

Russian engagement in Syria has inadvertently exposed the lies and failures of US actions in that country. Since the Obama administration began encouraging and assisting the overthrow of Syrian President Assad, the government and the lapdog media have claimed the existence of a democratic, moderate opposition. From late in 2011, US and UK military leaders began planning armed action against Assad. A surrogate army (the Free Syrian Army) was projected as an alternative to the fundamentalist jihadists seeking a feudal-theological state (Qatar and other Gulf states intervened, pretending no such distinctions). Weapons were diverted from Libya and CIA training began in earnest with a projected military force numbering in the tens of thousands.

After the ISIS threat emerged, the US and the other interventionists further pretended that its client fighting forces were equally engaged against ISIS and the many other groups fighting Assad who were designated “terrorist” by the West.

In reality, the US “freedom fighters” were virtually non-existent or collaborating enthusiastically with the jihadists. Their sole target was Assad.

The Obama government has conceded that of thousands vetted by the CIA program only a few hundred remain on the war front. Most have shared their weapons with or joined the jihadists or left Syria with the thousands of immigrants. The half-billion-dollar program is a disaster, with the US administration pledging to pass the remaining weapons and resources on to existing fighting groups in Syria.

The spectrum of the Western media reports that, especially since the Russian intervention, there is extensive cooperation, coordination, and joint action between all elements of the Syrian anti-Assad forces—so much for the ruse of an independent force in opposition to fundamentalism.

As the Wall Street Journal reports: “…the Homs Legion of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army… together with the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and Nusra Front [Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate] has formed joint command in Northern Homs.” The Washington Post has identified a similar unholy alliance of jihadist and “moderates” that was crafted into a Nusra-led Army of Conquest. Only the most gullible continue to believe that there is a significant difference between Western-backed “freedom fighters” and their jihadist allies.

Western liberals can make believe that US involvement in Syria is for some greater good, but the facts speak clearly. As with Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, tens of thousands are dead, infrastructure is devastated, and the social fabric is irreparably torn simply because imperialist powers seek more compliant, more subservient states. The facts expose the lie that the US and NATO seek the values of democracy, freedom, or the other values that prove so persuasive to those apologizing for self-interested regime change.

Anti-imperialists can draw a small consolation from these tragic, morally repellent aggressions: the US tactics have failed to achieve their goal of creating global fealty to US interests.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

A Cesspool of Hypocrisy

If there were a hypocrisy meter, the Obama administration surely would have achieved unprecedented numbers in recent weeks. With the Putin government announcing and swiftly executing military action in Syria, the US government and its NATO allies went apoplectic, accusing the Russians of destabilizing the Middle East, increasing the threat of terrorism, adding to homelessness, and risking the widening of the war. Of course any sane observer knows that the US has already destabilized the Middle East, fomented terrorism, brought on mass homelessness, and dramatically widened the war, while causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.

The Obama administration and its hyper-patriotic opposition within the ruling class are most indignant because Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Russian Federation have signed a mutual assistance accord that mounts a real anti-extremist front in the wars raging in Syria and Iraq. Irony of ironies, US meddling in the Middle East has brought two former intransigent enemies-- Iran and Iraq-- together. To the shock of US Geo-political schemers, a client state-- Iraq-- dares to defy its sponsor-- the US-- in forging this agreement. Iran and Russia, both squeezed extortionately by the vise of US/EU sanctions, have defied the school yard bullies to support the Syrian government.

Responding to recent Russian bombings of targets in Syria, Obama denounced the Russian moves as a “recipe for disaster.” No one in the administration has explained how Syria-- or Iraq, Libya, Yemen, or Afghanistan-- could be a bigger disaster.

Obama has accused the Russians of not discriminating between ISIS (ISIL) and the other opponents of the Assad government. He maintains that the Russians are supporting Assad rather than the anti-ISIS effort. At the same time, the US government concedes that the CIA has armed its own surrogates with sophisticated anti-tank weapons (TOW missiles) only useful against Assad's tanks and not ISIS. Hypocrisy!

While Obama maintains a fictitious difference between good and bad elements within the “opposition” and an expressed abhorrence of the violence, the opposition has achieved a “rare” unity in refusing to even attend meetings to discuss negotiations organized by the United Nations, according to the Associated Press. The AP story (Russia Launches New Wave of Air Raids in Syria, Targets IS Posts, Albert Aji and Jim Heintz, 10-04-15) goes on to acknowledge that the Syrian Opposition Coalition statement “was signed by the Salafist-jihadist Ahrar al-Sham as well as some of the rebel units that have received training and weapons from the United States and its allies.” Just how this motley united front of accused “terrorist” organizations and supposed moderates will offer a better life to Syrians after Assad has never been explained by the US government. Skeptics would, with justification, fear a repeat of the Libyan tragedy.

Equipped with the short memory and stunted imagination typical of US journalists, few have reflected upon the telling origins of the Syrian civil war. Of course the official account requires a massive dose of gullibility. It spins a tale of dedicated democrats who, foiled by the Assad government in their peaceful demonstrations, take up arms in a matter of months, even weeks, in 2011. No one in the media questions how this amorphous mass of private citizens is shaped up, armed, and led, in such a short span, against a sophisticated modern military and government security forces. Despite the miraculous appearance of arms from the late Muammar Gaddafi's destabilized Libya, despite the appearance of foreign fighters, US journalists found no cause to look for the hidden hands.

Instead, journalists continue to churn out copy that carefully follows the US/NATO line on all Middle Eastern matters. Consider the aptly named Liz Sly who slyly pumps out dispatches through the Washington Post that resemble rewrites of State Department releases. As with her equally discredited colleagues Judith Miller and Brian Williams, there seems to be no journalistic sins that warrant her consignment to journalistic hell. Sly infamously disseminated the fabricated story “Gay Girl in Damascus”:

On June 7, 2011 she wrote 'Gay Girl in Damascus' Blogger Detained, a news article that merged claims from a blog post with what appeared to be independently gathered facts in a way that suggested that youthful, attractive Syrian-American, Amina Arraf, was grabbed off the street along with 10,000 other Damascus citizens by the evil Assad forces. On June 8, the Washington Post retracted the story and on June 10, a 40-year-old US citizen confessed that the person, the story, and the blog were a hoax that he concocted. (ZZ's blog)

Of course perpetrating a hoax has not stopped Sly from advancing her career. On October 1, 2015, Sly (along with Andrew Roth) wrote from Beirut a story appearing in the Washington Post:

The expanding Russian involvement in Syria threatened to further complicate efforts to secure a negotiated settlement to the 4-year-old war at a time when the influx of refugees into Europe and the endurance of the Islamic State is focusing world attention on the unrelenting bloodshed in Syria.

Negotiated settlement? The “rebels” steadfastly refuse to even discuss a UN-sponsored meeting about negotiations as reported by the Associated Press. How does Russian involvement threaten something that only exists in the mind of Liz Sly?

As for refugees, Sly had previously written a fantastic, tortured story of how refugees in Lebanon voting absentee and en masse for Assad were actually coerced from afar by the nefarious Assad. This wild disparagement of Syrian refugees' sentiments for Assad reveals profoundly Sly's lack of understanding of the roots of the conflict and her determination to view the refugee crisis through the lens of State Department policy goals and not compassion.

Following the lead of US policy makers, Sly and her colleague denounce the Russian bombing targets:

Some of the towns struck are strongholds of a recently formed coalition, Jaish al-Fateh, or Army of Conquest, that includes the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra alongside an assortment of Islamist and moderate factions. Among them was a mosque in the northern Idlib town of Jisr al-Shugour, whose capture by the rebel coalition in April underscored the growing threat to the regime.

But notice how she concedes that Russian planes target a coalition-- a diverse ideological “assortment”-- of combatants, a concession that al-Qaida cooperates with the so-called moderates. Surely this acknowledges that the anti-Assad movement is a snake pit of opportunists. And the Russians are to be faulted for not asking for a show of hands within the Army of Conquest?

In light of the recent criminal bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan, a murderous act that NO journalist in the West can lay at the US's doorstep without preceding the fact with a host of mealy-mouthed “alleged,” “suspected,” or “charged” disclaimers, isn't it hypocritical that Sly so easily and assuredly blames the Russians for blowing up a mosque?

Roy Gutman at McClatchy (10-3-15) reports that the Kurds, the only reliable fighters against ISIS, support the Russian effort in Syria: “'We want Russia to provide us air support as well as weapons in our fight against the ISIL militants,' a YPG commander, Sipan Hemo, was quoted as telling the Russian Sputnik news portal. 'We can organize an effective cooperation with Russia on the issue'... Some analysts speculated that the YPG was interested in Russian support because Moscow was unlikely to respond to Turkey's worries that the Kurds' success would fuel a push for independence among its own Kurdish minority.”

Similarly, Iraq's Shiite militia welcome the Russian engagement. The Washington Post reports (10-05-15): “...Iraq's most powerful Iranian-backed Shiite militias said Monday they would welcome Russian airstrikes on IS in the country and accused the U.S. of failing to act decisively against the hardline group.”

As they have in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so many other countries, US and NATO meddling in Syria has unleashed destructive forces further destabilizing the Middle East.

Sadly, the forthcoming US Presidential elections promise no respite from this cesspool of hypocrisy. All the Republican candidates separate themselves from the administration by advocating more military intervention.

Hilary Clinton, similarly, appeals to the war mongers by advocating a no-fly zone over Syria-- an act that would strengthen ISIS and the Islamists by weakening Assad.

And Bernie Sanders evades the issue.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

From Postmodernism to Postsecularism-- A Review

In January of 2012, I reviewed Eric Walberg's book, Post-Modern Imperialism (Clarity Press, 2011). I enthusiastically concluded that:

Walberg has offered a welcome taxonomy of imperialism from its nineteenth-century genesis until today; he has given a plausible explanation of imperialism’s contours since the exit of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialism from the world stage; and he has convincingly described Israel’s unique role in the continuing reshaping of imperialism’s grasp for world domination.

Further, Walberg gave a needed response to misguided leftists who were quick to label Islamic resistance to US and Israeli predation as “Islamo-fascist.” Much of the US and European left took a smug, chauvinistic posture--a posture that coincided with the interests of imperialism-- toward fighters in the Muslim world daring to defy Western intervention and interference. They ignorantly announced that religious “fundamentalism” fatally tainted their resistance. Walberg struck a powerful blow against these immature conclusions.

Now Walberg has undertaken a more ambitious project in his new book, From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization (Clarity Press, 2013). His argument can be summarized-- without too much violence to its nuances-- as:

1. The last great secular social justice project-- socialism-- has failed with the demise of the Soviet Union.

2. Islam and its attendant political-social-economic doctrines are viable alternative routes to social justice.

3. Islam is the only alternative that can deliver social justice. Therefore, Islam is the universal way to social justice.

Of course Walberg goes to great lengths to shore this argument with a detailed, fascinating history of Islam and its currents that, alone, is worth the price of admission. He explores the relative shortcomings of other religions, a brief that is factually accurate, but, like the account of Islam, tellingly selective.

Hints of this thesis were embedded in the earlier book, Post-Modern Imperialism. I noted in my review: 

In the same vein, it is an exaggeration to portray Islam (or any other religion) as inherently anti-imperialist: in his words, “The unyielding anti-imperialist nature of Islam, its rejection of the fundamental principles of capitalism concerning money, its refusal to be sidelined from economic and hence political life…”

Unfortunately, Islam has the same tortured relationship with imperialism as have all the major religions. Precisely because they possess no robust doctrinal opposition to imperialism in general, all major religions have stood on both sides of the barricades.

The Islamist movement, Hamas, for example, stands as an important component of today's anti-imperialist front.

But it was not always this way. US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, speaking in Jerusalem on December 20, 2001, affirmed that the rise of Hamas coincided with “the promotion of the Islamic movement as a counter to the Palestinian nationalist movement... with the tacit support of Israel” as reported by Dean Andromidas in Global Outlook (Summer 2002). Andromidas quoted Kurtzer: “Israel perceived it as better to have people turn towards religion than toward a nationalistic cause [like the PLO].” PLO leader Yasser Arafat is quoted from the Italian press:

But Hamas is a creature of Israel which gave Hamas money, and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities and mosques. Even Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him with it, in the presence of Mubarek.

And

Hamas was constituted with the support of Israel. The aim was to create an organization antagonistic to the PLO. They received financing and training from Israel. They have continued to benefit from permits and authorizations.

In the same issue of Global Outlook, author Hassane Zerrouky (Hamas is a Creature of Mossad) outlines how “Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat's Fatah movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal repression and intimidation.” (reprinted in Global Outlook from L'Humanité).

Thus, while honest revolutionaries must recognize Hamas’s role in defending Palestinians from imperialism today, honesty equally demands acknowledgment of its sordid role in collaborating with Israel in the destruction of secular nationalism and the Palestinian left. It's difficult to find an “unyielding anti-imperialist nature” in this treachery.

Egyptian Communists acknowledge this vulnerability to imperialist manipulation in the August 3 statement of their Central Committee:

One of the objectives of the projects of imperialism in the Middle East is the establishment of states on religious grounds, which serves mainly Zionist plan to declare Israel a Jewish state for all Jews in the world, as well as the important results of  pushing these religious countries to inevitably get caught up in sectarian conflict. And it necessarily creates strategic divisions and fragmentations of the Arab countries and brings the conflict between Sunni - Shiite, Muslim - Christian, Muslim - Jewish to replace the Arab-Israeli national liberation conflict, to replace the social class struggle among the peoples of the Arab countries, and to replace the struggle against authoritarian regimes  allied with the imperialist global and international monopolies.

Most Arab socialists and Communists have sought unity with organized Islamic anti-imperialist organizations, sometimes successfully, as with Hizbullah and Lebanese Communists. But on other occasions that trust has been brutally betrayed, as with the slaughter of the Tudeh (Communists) in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For Marxists, the major religions are a sometime ally in the struggle against imperialism.

Insofar as they welcome cooperation and reject collaboration with the class enemy, Islam and the other major religions will find consistent friends in Marxist-Leninists. Thus, we welcome and support the current shift in the leadership of the Catholic Church toward the cause of the poor and against the ravages of capitalism, just as we regretted the alienation of past Popes from the fate of the Catholic masses.

Contrary to Walberg's premise number two-- the centerpiece of the above argument-- Islam and the other major religions fall far short of offering an adequate ethics of social justice for today's world. The Quran, like the doctrines of the Catholic Church, forbids usury, the collecting of interest on debt. Absent usury, Walberg believes that a comprehensive practice of charity will provide Islam with a complete program of social justice for today and tomorrow.

Aside from the fact that religious practitioners and their leaders conveniently find ways to sidestep or obscure the prohibition of the collecting of interest, “usury” fails to even remotely capture the prevalence and depth of modern-day labor exploitation. The Catholic Church's condemnation of “excess” profits fails for the same reasons. To suggest that charity alone can solve the incredible poverty, unemployment, and economic inequality of, say, a country like Mali seems patently improbable. And the solution of charity seems dangerously close to the answer advocated by the apologists for unfettered capitalism.

Likewise, the Hebrew concept of “Jubilee,” as an admirable moral prescription of debt removal and property restoration and an answer to the inequities of antiquity, will not put a moral dent in contemporary capitalism. That said, the vital principles of economic justice found in the Torah, the Gospels, and the Quran suggest a posture toward the ravages of capitalism. A casual reader of the texts held sacred by the respective religions will find much encouragement for a condemnation of the process of capitalist accumulation. Should believers read those texts with earnestness, they would undoubtedly become Communists as well as believers!

My own-- perhaps eccentric-- view is that the major religions cannot escape the charge of hypocrisy unless they embrace socialism, the contemporary embodiment of the moral codes of their founders. Unfortunately, most religious leaders in our time choose to accommodate capitalism.

Walberg is not insensitive to the alternative vision of Marx and Communism. He devotes a full chapter to “Postsecularism: Marx and Muhammad,” going to great lengths to show that Islam answers the questions posed by Marxism while avoiding its “shortcomings.” 

Destructive to his argument, he misunderstands the Marxist theory of value as follows:

Kapital's weakness-- the labor theory of value-- is a materialist reductio ad absurdum, denying the 'value' of 'unproductive' labor (the elements brought to bear by the capitalist related to securing markets, research, innovations, factor management)...

This is fatally confused. Marx recognizes a value contribution in ALL necessary labor culminating in the production of a commodity, including the research, innovation, essential organizational management, etc. Further, he sees a necessary value deduction in the labor essential for a commodity's circulation. What he does not recognize is any value created or socially necessary from the mere fact of ownership. And this contradiction between ownership and labor is precisely the element missing in all of the social doctrines of traditional religions including Islam.

Walberg's confusion about Marx's value theory leads him away from the resolution of the contradiction between value created by labor and the ownership of that value by the capitalist, a contradiction only resolved by class struggle.

This error dooms his well-meant, but naive  synthesis of Islam and Marxism:

The ijtihad-jihad process is in a sense just a more comprehensive version of Marxist praxis [by] emphasizing:

●social unity rather than class struggle

●the family and spiritual life rather than material production

●evolution rather than revolution

While the sentiment is noble, it is irreconcilable with Marxism. Capitalism's rapaciousness-- acknowledged by Walberg-- cannot be eliminated by a retreat to mere spirituality, an unconditional appeal to unity or a common destiny, or the virtue of patience. These are simple facts that religions cannot escape.

I would propose a counter synthesis:

●class struggle as the path to social unity

●the family and spiritual life AND material production

●revolution leading to the realization of these values

which could readily open the road to a Marxist-Islamic understanding and cooperation.

Walberg's book is timely, coming in the wake of the so-called “Arab Spring.” One feels a veritable joy in his writings bursting from the optimism generated by the risings in Northern Africa and the Middle East. Unfortunately, that optimism proved short-lived. 

The Islamic governments established in Tunisia and Egypt generated great social rifts culminating in overthrow in one and growing tensions in the other. Open opposition in Libya and Syria drew the intervention of outside forces that swiftly transformed the struggle into imperialist regime change, destabilization of the regions, and enormous human and infrastructure destruction. Grievances were quickly appropriated by US and NATO meddlers who seized an opportunity to shape the outcomes.

In a little over a year, the rise of Islamic civilization that Walberg foresaw was dashed on the rocks of divisiveness and foreign intervention, just as it has in other times and places.

For the Marxist left, the Arab Spring provoked reservations and guarded sympathy, even apart from nefarious outside interference. On one hand, the rising against entrenched, reactionary authority was a welcome expression of popular will. On the other hand, the risings appeared to be more rebellions than revolutions. That is, the goals of the insurgents were neither united nor well-formed.

As events unfolded, these fears were borne out. Rather than challenge the structures of privilege and exploitation, sides were drawn around different attitudes toward tradition and “modernity,” secularism and spiritualism. While real and not fanciful, these differences do not touch the deeper relations of oppression. As with modern-day Western liberals who are occupied with lifestyle decisions and personal choices, the battles contested in the Arab Spring guaranteed that the poverty and exploitation of the masses would remain untouched.

One hopes are for the revival of a vibrant Marxist-Leninist movement in these countries to nurture these developments from rebellion to revolution.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com