On 9/15/13 8:34 PM, michael perelman wrote: > Please calm down on this. Syria offers no easy answers.
No, there are no easy answers but we are dealing with a huge problem on the left. Most people, who get their analysis from Robert Fisk or Pepe Escobar, view all the rebels from the FSA to the most hardened jihadist as the entire left once viewed the Nicaraguan contras. But this view is only tenable on the basis of knowing as little as possible about the subject. Over the past two and a half years, I have been paying very close attention to both the fighters inside Syria and to their supporters in the USA. I have also had long conversations over Skype with a defector from the Syrian army who now lives in Yemen. I am not sure exactly why so many on the left are so ready to demonize these people but I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that Assad is demonized in the bourgeois press. There is a natural tendency for the left to identify with anybody who is hated by Nicholas Kristof or Samantha Powers. However, this has little to do with developing a Marxist analysis of the Syrian struggle. In fact it is a kind of mechanical thinking that is antithetical to everything Marx stood for. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
