Both corporate Western media and so-called progressive media have been positively giddy with celebration in the wake of the U.S. and Turkish-backed terrorist takeover of what was formerly the Syrian Arab Republic.
Articles and statements have flooded different outlets and social media profiles with statements congratulating the Syrian people on their victory over the “dictator” Bashar Al-Assad. According to these news corporations and non-profit organizations, Syria will now finally be “free.”
These assertions are strange in the face of current events that are actively playing out in Syria. Since the Syrian Arab Republic officially fell and former President Assad fled on Dec. 9, the country has further devolved into chaos and fire.
Immediately after Hay’at Tahir al-Sham (HTS) troops entered Damascus, Zionist occupation forces unleashed the largest offensive in their history. Syria was the target of that offensive. Zionist air forces and artillery struck Syria 480 times in less than 48 hours, destroying the entire Syrian military and navy. The Zionists faced no opposition from HTS forces.
Compounding the crisis, HTS and their allies have unleashed a bloody campaign against Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities. Fearing for their lives, thousands of Shia Alewites, Syrian Christians, and Syrian Kurds have fled towards the Lebanese border seeking refuge. This refugee crisis mounts as reports across Syria confirm that HTS is summarily executing members of various ethnic and religious minority communities, as well as anyone associated with the Syrian Arab Army. No trials. No due process. Just blood.
This is supposedly the freedom Syria now has due to the fall of the Syrian Arab Republic and its longtime leader, Bashar Al-Assad.
All of this destruction and violence, which clearly benefits the U.S. and Israel, is supposedly justified because Assad was a “Dictator” and a “Tyrant.” The justification of imperialist regime change through allegations of dictatorship and tyranny is not new.
In 1990, Marxist analyst Sam Marcy wrote an article observing that these sorts of allegations were classic imperialist tactics aimed at breaking movements that would resist the U.S. military. In this article, named “A new turn in the world struggle: U.S. intervention in the Middle East,” Marcy said:
“Vilification of Third World leaders opposed to U.S. intervention in their respective countries is not a new phenomenon in U.S. politics. But it reaches absolutely absurd heights when it comes to the Arab people.
“In the contemporary era, Col. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq have shared the kind of vilification that Nasser experienced. At present, the imperialist press, especially in the U.S., seems to have pulled out all stops in slander, deceit and vilification in the case of Saddam Hussein – criminal, terrorist, bum, tyrant, madman, etc., etc. ad nauseam.”
Marcy goes on to point out the hypocrisy of the United States claiming the moral high ground in any situation on issues of human rights and territorial expansion. As Marcy notes, the entirety of the United States was built on the genocide of Indigenous peoples.
Nonetheless, Marcy notes several examples of how U.S. propaganda is used to undermine any leader in the Global South who would dare to resist their influence or their military sphere of control.
Just like with Saddam Hussein, the U.S. imperialist propaganda machine has churned for over a decade using any social problem inherent in a capitalist society like Syria as evidence that Bashar Al-Assad was a “criminal, terrorist, bum, tyrant madman, etc. etc. ad nauseam.” This is a tactic the imperialists use again and again to justify the destruction of entire societies, from Iraq to Libya and now to Syria. All of this is with the aim of imperialist expansion throughout the Middle East and crushing any remaining resistance.
In the same article, Marcy prognosticated what is now unfolding across the Middle East,
“The Arab people are not the only ones menaced by imperialism in the Middle East. The effort of the U.S. to make the Mediterranean Sea a U.S. lake has put the Middle East in danger of military intervention for many years now. No country there is safe. Few are free either from U.S. domination or its terror.
“The first duty of the progressive and working-class movement in the U.S. is to call for immediate withdrawal of U.S. warships, troops and planes from the entire Middle East area. As has been pointed out again and again, the terms of the NATO treaty are supposed to be effective only for the North Atlantic states in the North Atlantic. Europeans and the U.S. have no business under that treaty of even being in the Mediterranean.”
Not only has Marcy’s observation regarding U.S. military policy borne out in exponential horror since these words were written, but his call to the progressive and working-class movement is more important than ever.
In the 34 years since Marcy wrote his article, the U.S. invaded Iraq, NATO bombing assisted a terrorist takeover of Libya, and now a U.S.-enabled terrorist takeover has plunged Syria into darkness.
Now, more than ever, the entire movement needs to heed Marcy’s words and see the fall of Syria for what it truly is: another U.S. imperialist hostile takeover of a country that would dare resist its grasp of exploitation.
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