Someone who opposes the Assad dictatorship but harbors inexplicable delusions about the character of the US Pentagon, seeing in it a potential for humanitarian military interventions, has just claimed that antiwar activists who oppose US intervention in Syria “have a lot of blood on their hands.” It’s a militarist frame of mind that substitutes power politics for massive, public, relentless opposition to war, occupation, genocide. Coincidental that fascist Eva Bartlett also once accused me of that for opposing Assad & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians?
Those sustaining war, occupation, persecution, genocide have a right to defend themselves by any means necessary, including arming themselves. But when, as in Syria, small paramilitary groups are up against nearly 70 of the most powerful & barbaric military forces in the world (or as in Kashmir & Burma, where small badly armed & poorly trained groups face overwhelming military force), it is insufficient to rely on militarism to withstand the onslaught. How does the accuser believe the US & Saudis who are bombing Yemen to smithereens or the US which dropped the Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan & turned Mosul & Raqqa into dead zones will transubstantiate into freedom fighters? That would be the very essence of magical thinking & political idiocy.
There is no militarist end run around regrouping antiwar forces around the world to stand with the Syrian people & demand the immediate cessation of Syrian, Russian, & US coalition bombing of civilians & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces & operatives from Syria.