The Snarks of War

I am a follower of the reliably solid left-wing blog Left Foot Forward on Facebook.

One of the more admirable traits of the blog is its willingness to stand up for human rights in the Middle East and in recent weeks it has featured some good coverage of the escalating slaughter in Syria. However, every time an update is filed on the Facebook page some snarky Chomsky-wannabe appears to offer a ‘commentary’ on the situation.

When a story was posted about an anti-Assad activist calling for a no-fly zone, one follower felt obliged to comment “what about Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia? Do these countries not exist? Or is Syria the whole Arab world now? Motives for intervening in Syria are wholly selfish and will not benefit the Syrian people, instead the country will just be divided up and more bloodshed will take place between the dozen or so ethnic groups that reside there”.

Why does the fact that there are other abhorrent regimes in the Middle East mean we shouldn’t intervene to stop one that is escalating a war on its own people by the day? What justification is offered for a potential Western intervention being ‘selfish’? Is the opposition to any intervention in Syria by Russia and China (both of whom have significant trade relations with the Assad regime, particularly in arms and oil) a selfless and principled stance? And even if the motives were selfish, what does it matter if lives are saved? What evidence is there that the country will be divided up?

The answer is that there is no evidence for anything offered up by the comments, but they are disdainful of the West and that’s all that counts. No matter if they are also disdainful of the Syrian people being murdered by the army every day. No matter if they offer succour to the fascist dictatorship of Assad, or if they take sides with Russia, a one-party state with rigged elections that assassinates dissidents, and China, a one-party state that doesn’t even bother rigging elections and which tortures its own citizens on a scale to make Guantanamo look insignificant. None of this matters so long as the self-satisfied ‘left-wing’ Westerner can voice their smug negativity. It is not a considered argument but a vacuous and constant oppositionalism with no thought to consequences.

This was repeated a few days later when another story about the escalating mass-killing in Homs was met with the following comment form another ill-informed snark: “Western intervention normally leads to even more slaughter”.

There you have it, Syrian comrades; forget the reality of murder and violence you face every day, ‘Western intervention’ (not withstanding the fact that the Arab League has also called for intervention) will only lead to more slaughter so I’m afraid we can do nothing to help you.

Of course Western non-intervention by contrast has worked so well before to prevent slaughters in Srebrenica and Rwanda. The point is that every situation is different, and if people want to have a proper debate about the pros and cons of intervention in Syria then let’s have it. The situation in Syria is complex and there are no easy answers in the long-term, but to glibly dismiss Western intervention as always leading to more slaughter is foolish and ignorant, one only has to ask a Kosovan to see this.

The priority has to be to end the killing in Syria and to prevent a full-blown civil war. This may well require intervention from NATO and/or The Arab League, and if that is the case then the petty minds that must always blame the West for everything need to start thinking practically or end up cuddling next to Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin and the ruthless bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Economic Scuffles

For those interested, I have just completed a new post over at the Aequitas blog about the productivity debate in Australia and the views of the "political troglodytes and economic lunatics"* at the HR Nicholls society:


* Copyright RJ Hawke

On the US Marines Scandal

This is of course disgusting and utterly indefensible. Not only for the practical, realpolitik reason that there can be few more effective ways to alienate the entire population of the Middle East, but also because it is wrong on  every conceivable moral level. No matter if these dead men were Taliban fighters, we owe them the dignity in death they denied to others in life. When we give them their dignity we uphold our own. When we defile them we defile ourselves.


But consider this; the actions of these soldiers have been condemned by the Pentagon, by the President, by the US Secretary of Defense and by prominent figures from both sides of politics including former soldiers like John McCain. Pretty much the only major figure to try and excuse this incident has been the unelectable bozo, Rick Perry, which only demonstrates further why he will never be President.


The men have been identified and an investigation is already under way with action to follow. Time will tell  how transparent the process will be and how appropriate the punishment will be, and this will no doubt be cause for further discussion in the future. But an important question to ask is this; can we imagine any of the above being said and done by the Taliban?


The Taliban leadership, those who order the mass execution of political enemies, who sanction the mutilation of women and the  murder of children, who command their followers to blow up civilians and to capture and torture NATO troops, those who ban music and condone rape, have described the act as "barbaric". To label this as 'hypocrisy' is to cheapen the tragedy of those subjected to Taliban rule. 


I say it again; any barbaric act by anyone, whether in Afghanistan or anywhere else, is to be condemned, but let's not kid ourselves that this latest scandal is anywhere near the the level of the worst atrocities being committed in Afghanistan by those politely referred to as 'insurgents'. 

An Introduction of Sorts

As this is my first post I thought I ought to begin with an explanation of why I am writing here.

I was inspired to begin this blog after reading an appalling post on the popular British far-left blog, Lenin’s Tomb, run by Richard Seymour. You can see it here:

http://leninology.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/military-wives-and-sickening.html

Seymour is a member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (as was I, for my sins, at aged 16) and author of the hysterically titled book ‘The Liberal Defence of Murder’. He takes the view that all British soldiers, in fact all Western soldiers, are murderers and that any intervention by the West in any political situation, no matter how many atrocities could be prevented, is a form of colonialism. This is a commonly held view on the far Left, but Seymour goes even further and suggests in his comments on the article that it is perfectly legitimate and correct for those in lands with a British military presence to try and ‘harm and kill’ British troops.

Even for an SWP member this seems extreme. One of my fellow travellers in the Stockport Hillgate branch of the SWP was an ex-squaddie, and despite his opposition to all Western wars he maintained an understanding and empathy for working class army lads like himself. Not only because he could relate to them, but also because he was politically savvy enough to see that any revolutionary mass movement could not afford to alienate rank and file soldiers and their families (incidentally, Lenin too had enough insight to know this and it was of course the collaboration of the army with the revolution in February 1917 that secured its success).

Seymour though eschews such sentiments and feels it appropriate to attack the (admittedly saccharine) Christmas release by the Military Wives Choir, alleging that “their husbands murder Afghans for queen and country, and they murder music for the same righteous cause.” 

The ignorance and simple mindedness of this statement is astounding, but perhaps to be expected from someone who responds to critics on his blog by saying “fuck you with your pseudo-class pseudo-arguments… take your white, male imperialist working class and fucking cram it up your sanctimonious a-hole”. Telling someone to cram the working class up their a-hole is strange language for a supposed socialist but such is the state of the contemporary far left. 


Apparently the profanity spewing Seymour is currently completing a PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics; let’s hope his pronouncements on Emile Durkheim are a tad more eloquent. 


Not content with labelling current soldiers murderers, he seeks to defame the dead too and agitates for a mass burning of poppies, specifically demanding a bonfire larger than those conducted by the extremist bigots of Islam4UK.*

I immediately felt a special kind of stomach tightening rage and was driven to write the following comment:

“There is no better exhibit than this of the pathetic state of the rump of extremists claiming to represent the Left in Britain.

So we are supposed to believe that it is not the theocratic bullies and thugs of the Taliban, those who seek to ban all music and art under the auspices of religious fanaticism, that are the evil ones, but the wives and partners of British soldiers, whose husbands apparently “murder Afghans for Queen and country”? (I can scarcely believe that this last, laughably infantile line is intended seriously, but apparently it is.)

What hope for a ‘Leftism’ that so easily dismisses and ridicules the deep-held values of working class Britons? What hope for a politics where smug, self-satisfied jokes referencing the Frankfurt School (which aren’t half as funny or clever as they think they are) are a substitute for empathy?

Your opinions in this piece vary from the morally disgusting to the absolute epitome of reality-denial – I’m thinking here of the feeble assertion that anyone who enjoyed the song “can't acknowledge the ethnocentric bases” for this – all cut through with a turgid and po-faced mediocrity of style.

I’m not quite sure what this form of politics is; it certainly appears reactionary, cruel, anti-democratic, narcissistic and hateful, but whatever it is it is not of the Left, at least not the authentic Left. The only saving grace is that your ugly and mutated contrarianism will never exert any influence whatsoever, which I suspect is really, deep down, what you want. So much more exhilarating to sneer and puff the chest from the sidelines isn’t it?”

To date it doesn’t seem to have appeared on the blog, perhaps it never will, but it did inspire me to expand further on my anger and begin blogging here.

For some time now I have been disenchanted with large segments of the Left and the kind of morally simplistic politics that leads them to defend all manner of appalling characters, provided they have the right enemies. 


You can advocate the genital mutilation of young girls, the murder of adulterous women (though of course not men), the killing of homosexuals or the extermination of Jews, but so long as you aren’t white and you denounce America you will find a ‘progressive’ friend. The raw hatred of America, Israel and the West that pervades parts of the Left leads directly to the kind of anti-life, totalitarian bullying found at Lenin’s Tomb. 

The fact that a site that can host an article as awful as this is one of Britain’s most read left-wing blogs was the catalyst for me to start writing back. 


So here I am.

* I am reminded here of a recent comment by Michael White of the Guardian. When he suggested to a group of Occupy protesters that wearing poppies might help them connect with working class voters, he was told "we don't do poppies".