What a mess the competing analyses of Syria are & they have been since a popular revolution against Assad was turned into a civil war after 2011. The extremes of those who claim to be left thinkers are from enthusiastic, actually rightwing support for Assad & denial of Syrian & Russian carpet bombing to those of confused political allegiance who hate Assad & want the US or Saudi Arabia to intervene against Syrian & Russian bombing. The latter call for humanitarian US military intervention & are campaigning for Clinton since they see her as most reliable war-monger.

There’s no possible reconciliation between these points of view & no possible agreement with either. They’re both nuts. Adherents of Assad dismiss the popular revolution against his autocracy but are wary of US intervention & opponents of Assad’s tyranny campaign for US intervention. They’re both playing with fire. You can’t make those kind of mistakes before you find yourself politically irrelevant or at least in a downward spiral.

When you try to unravel what the problem is, why the analyses are so unhinged, it appears many can’t theoretically deal with complexity & apparent contradictions in reality, so they improvise & then become wedded to their massive blunders & to militarism.

The only way to cut through all that is to demand no military intervention in Syria by any government & to build support for the popular movement against Assad which still struggles on.