The importance of this article is that it explains an online controversy.
Chomsky signed a letter without knowing who some of the people were, whom it
criticized.
Miriam
DIANA JOHNSTONE: The Imperialism of Foolery
April 7, 2021
Pro-Western Syrian exiles have issued a diatribe against the most
informative critics of U.S. war policy at a time when Washingtons
aggressiveness is reaching new levels of intensity.
A protest placard in the Kafersousah neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Dec.
26, 2012. (Freedom House, Flickr)
By Diana Johnstone
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
No promising event has more fully failed to keep its promise than the
optimistically named Arab Spring. Ten years ago, massive protest
demonstrations that began in Tunisia and moved quickly to Egypt were hailed
as the harbinger of democracy overtaking the Middle East in one great swoop
of history.
It didnt go that way. The result has been demoralization in Tunisia,
enforced military rule in Egypt, the destruction of Libya as a viable
nation, endless war and famine in Yemen, Syria in ruins, and not a scratch
on the most autocratic nations in the region, starting with Saudi Arabia and
Qatar.
Libya offered decisive evidence that getting rid of a dictator does not
automatically transform a country into a new Switzerland.
A lesson to be drawn is that when it comes to trying to unite and modernize
relatively new nation states (especially in the hostile environment of the
Middle East), the imperfections of developing ways to govern must deal with
sometimes antagonistic, tribal, ethnic and religious groups. If the shell
is broken, what emerges may be chaos rather than the neat, peaceful, party
rivalries of Western representative democracy a political norm quite
recent in human history.
Democracy & Revolution
This norm was much more a product of the evolutionary growth in economic
power and influence of the bourgeoisie in Western society than of violent
revolution, although the process did involve violent uprisings in France and
the American colonies of the British Empire. However, throughout the 20th
century, revolution was associated not with the institution of electoral
systems democracy as currently understood but rather with going beyond
such formal democracy in order to institute a change in the economic
system, namely socialism.
This was what revolutionary movements, notably those labeled as anarchist or
Trotskyist, had in mind. In reality, genuine revolution is not a frequent
event. As the prospect of such social revolution in the West has faded,
Western revolutionaries have turned to hailing any movement against existing
non-Western states as revolutionary, progressive, if not socialist, then at
least democratic.
Such revolutionaries, often academics, form a cheering section for one
anti-governmental uprising after the other: for the Kosovars in Serbia,
for Kurds anywhere, for Chechens when they were blowing up theaters and
schools in Russia, for the Libyan protesters in Benghazi (who were actually
Islamic fundamentalists, contrary to reports at the time), for Uyghers
today.
On March 27, the vicarious revolutionary cheering section marked the 10th
anniversary of the war in Syria by sponsoring a statement by 65 Syrian
exiles, many of them academics in Western universities, who are long-term
opponents of the Baathist ruling party in Syria.
Gilbert Achcar in 2014. (Tiq, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Franco-Lebanese academic Gilbert Achcar led the drive to gather over 300
supporting signatories from numerous countries. The gist of the message
was to condemn American and other Western independent anti-war writers for
failing to support the Syrian revolution that never happened.
Because indeed, the democratic Syrian revolution with which those exiles
identify did not happen. Demonstrations and repression do not make a
revolution. Those triggering events in early 2011 were rapidly hijacked by
armed rebels supported by a range of outside powers aspiring to use the
disorder to break Syria into pieces a long-term policy aim of Israel which
does not meet with opposition from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey
or their
friends in Washington. The Arab nationalist regime in Syria had been on
their hit-list for decades.
The 65 Syrian signatories live in Western countries. Their text clearly
presents Syria as a dichotomy between themselves, who oppose the regime, and
Bashar al Assad. They accuse the anti-war writers of supporting Assad and
dehumanizing the Syrian people by ignoring themselves, individuals who
have opposed the Assad regime in the past and suffered for it.
Demonstrations and repression
do not make a revolution.
But the real existing conflict in Syria today is not between Bachar al Assad
and 65 exiled intellectuals. Proclaiming support for Westernized
intellectual opponents of Assad is totally irrelevant to the existing
situation. The exiles could reasonably blame their irrelevance on the CIA,
which spent a billion dollars a year, in cahoots with Saudi Arabia, in the
clandestine Operation Timber Sycamore arming and training Islamist rebels
opposed to Baathist secularism who made opposition to Assad their own
exclusive cause.
U.S. Marines and Jordanian Army soldiers collaborate in Amman, Jordan,
during Timber Sycamore, September 2016. (U.S. Military, Wikimedia Commons)
Syria Still Under Attack
Parts of Syria today are still under hostile occupation by Islamists with
Turkish support around Idlib in the northwest; by the United States in the
oil-producing regions of the northeast; and by Israel on the Golan Heights.
For good measure, Israel bombs Syria from time to time.
The country is being quite deliberately strangled by U.S. sanctions.
None of this is mentioned by the Syrian exiles who feel abused by
self-styled anti-imperialist writers who plead for an end to the sanctions
that deprive Syrians living in their own country of food, medicines and
other necessities of life.
Democracy can only be brought to a nation by its own people. However,
opposition figures in many countries are encouraged by the National
Endowment for Democracy and less open channels to fancy that U.S. support
can help them get rid of rulers they hate and even give them a role in a
changed regime. Such figures were active in the invasion of Iraq and the
destruction of Libya. In the present situation, the main thing such
pro-Western Syrian exiles can do to apply for such support is to use their
victim status to attack critics of U.S. foreign policy.
Democracy can only be brought
to a nation by its own people.
They have let themselves be rounded up for this purpose, issuing a diatribe
targeting many of the most principled and informative critics of U.S. war
policy. The initial text cited by name investigative journalists Max
Blumenthal, Aaron Maté, Ben Norton, Rania Khalek, as well as Caitlin
Johnstone, Jimmy Dore, Antiwar.com, Kim Iversen, Mint Press News, Consortium
News, and many others. These names were scratched out by Achcar in order to
induce Noam Chomsky to add his own most highly valued signature.
Aaron Maté of The GrayZone recounts that Chomsky defended his signature on
the grounds that without the names, the letter is merely an abstract
statement of principle, expressing general support for people.
But which people? By reducing Syria to a confrontation between themselves
and Assad, the exiled intellectuals dismiss as insignificant millions of
Syrians in Syria who, however critical of their government, support it in
preference to chaos or rule by Islamist fanatics. Support to these Syrian
exiles entails an attack on writers doing what Chomsky historically used to
do himself: give priority to criticizing his own government, which he can
theoretically influence, instead of trying to influence policy in foreign
countries.
Full list of names at 1:31.13
Throughout, this letter claims that critics of U.S. involvement in Syria are
(1) motivated by support for Assad and (2) influenced in some way by
alignment with Russia and China. No evidence or examples are provided to
back these totally improbable assertions. There is no mention of Turkey,
Saudi Arabia or Qatar, and U.S. involvement is played down:
But America is not central to what has happened in Syria, despite what
these people claim. The idea that it somehow is, all evidence to the
contrary notwithstanding, is a by-product of a provincial political culture
which insists on both the centrality of US power globally as well as the
imperialist right to identify who the good guys and the bad guys are in
any given context.
This is an extraordinarily meaningless statement. The U.S. is sitting on
Syrian oil, letting it be siphoned off to Turkey, doing everything to
prevent reconstruction, but it is not central to what has happened in
Syria. And it supposedly takes a provincial political culture to notice
the centrality of U.S. power globally.
And what is the principle being defended here? The naughty writers are
blamed for reinforcing a dysfunctional status quo and impeding the
development of a truly progressive and international approach to global
politics; one that we so desperately need, given the planetary challenges of
responding to global warming.
Huh? What on earth does that mean? What is this truly progressive and
international approach to global politics they yearn for? What would it
accomplish and how? Not a clue.
The diatribe concludes:
This is the anti-imperialism and leftism of the unprincipled, of the
lazy, and of fools, and only reinforces the dysfunctional international
gridlock exhibited in the UN Security Council. We hope that readers of this
letter will join us in opposing it.
This snide and incoherent broadside against genuine independent
anti-imperialist writers comes at a time when Washingtons aggressiveness is
reaching new levels of intensity and many antiwar writers are confronted
with growing attempts at marginalization and even censorship. It is so
timely to brand them all with the label anti-imperialism of fools.
To reply to the labelers in their language, let me say that the promoters of
this despicable letter are practicing the imperialism of foolers. The gambit
is to fool people into seeing imperialism in so many places that it is
neutralized. The United States has a military budget that exceeds that of
all its major adversaries and allies put together, operates nearly a
thousand bases all around the world, destroys countries one after the other
by sanctions and subversion, clearly wants to change regimes even in Russia
and China, and practices nuclear war games on their borders. Its world
hegemonic pretensions are blatant and frightening.
But if any nation resists this global onslaught, it must be imperialist too.
So to be an Achcar-approved anti-imperialist, you can say bad things about
the United States, but you must say equally bad things about whichever
nation has the ability and will to resist, because it too must be
imperialist. That way you can congratulate yourself on being a perfectly
pure and absolutely useless anti-imperialist.
No, we are not such fools.
Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and
Western Delusions. Her latest book is Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a
World Watcher (Clarity Press). The memoirs of Diana Johnstones father Paul
H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her
commentary. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@xxxxxxxxxx
