Michael Karadjis, an Australian professor who opposes the Assad regime, also advocates for a no-fly zone in Syria administered by the US Pentagon. He has never clarified what prompts his trust in the US other than hoping against hope & closing his mind to over 150 years of US war & colonial history. On September 11th, he posted this call on his Facebook wall & since I am unable to respond because of the 30-day ban I am currently sustaining I will respond to it here. This is his comment:
“FLOOD IDLIB WITH ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES NOW! TO PREVENT THE ASSAD/PUTIN SLAUGHTER! Let the Syrian people on the ground exercise their right to self-determination, by providing them the means to bring hundreds of Assadist and Russian warplanes crashing to the ground in fire. After all these years of horror, give the Syrian children in Idlib the right to observe a massive fireworks display in the sky, rather than allowing the warplanes of the fascist regime and its invading Russian imperialist backer to roast those children. There is no humanitarian, ethical, political or even practical reason for this to not happen. The manpads are available and have been for years. They are only blocked from entry into Syria by the US government, which has blocked them since 2012. Anyone who thinks this statement is just mechanical “anti-Americanism” in the face of the Russians doing the slaughter, just try to deny these facts. It is an air war against civilians, launched, yes, by Russia and Assad; the means of bringing down their warplanes, without any intervention, by the Syrian people themselves, exist; these means are blocked by the US. For anyone that thinks that this call on the US to *end* its intervention is a call for “imperialist intervention” against nice Mother Russia and the nice secular Syrian government, you are the equivalent of neo-Nazis.”
This is my response:
Which country would be doing the flooding with anti-aircraft missiles? The US block on weapons is a form of military intervention on behalf of the Assad regime. It is an obfuscation of the role that the US is playing in the counterrevolution, not an abstention. Are we to call on the Pentagon to change its character and now become a partisan of the revolution? That sounds like pissing into the wind.
Those who oppose the Assad regime have been able to mobilize tens of thousands in protests around the world while the ‘official’ antiwar organizations refuse to protest & support Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. Why does Karadjis completely ignore organizing principled antiwar mobilizations & instead substitute trust that the US Pentagon will deliver anti-aircraft missiles if we call for them to do so? It’s peculiar politics that looks to one of the most bellicose institutions in the world to save the Syrian revolution rather than mobilizing the hundreds of thousands of people who oppose all military intervention in Syria.