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With the prospects of increased U.S. military involvement in Syria, peace activists have been mobilizing across the country. Recognizing the disastrous results of recent U.S. military interventions, the suspicions throughout the region regarding Washington's motivations, and the lack of any major cohesive democratic armed force to support, there is a widespread understanding within the anti-war left that further militarization of the conflict would likely increase the suffering of the Syrian people.
Unfortunately, there are elements of the anti-war movement that do not just oppose U.S. intervention in that country's multisided civil war, but actually defend the brutal Syrian regime, which has been responsible for the vast majority of the estimated 85,000 civilian deaths.
Similar expressions of solidarity with socialist governments and movements during the Cold War, while at times excessive, were nevertheless understandable, particularly in light of Washington's demonization of any challenge to U.S. hegemony. By contrast, such support for the extraordinarily brutal Assad regime -- a family dictatorship rooted in the anti-leftist military wing of the Baath Party -- has no moral or logical basis.
Longtime peace activist Terry Burke, who worked with the Pledge of Resistance and the Nicaragua Solidarity Committee during the U.S.-backed wars in Central America in the 1980s, has called on the U.S. peace movement to "listen to progressive Syrian voices."
In an article in the socialist monthly In These Times, Burke observed the irony of how, unlike in previous anti-war movements, "that awareness, that sensitivity towards activists from the affected countries is seemingly absent today from major peace organizations regarding the Syrian conflict."
full: https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/anti-war-movement-must-listen-voices-within-syrias-civil-war
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