Blog #9 - Syeda

For this blog, I don’t mean to speak too closely to the screenshot provided in the instructional post with Russia having ‘irrefutable proof that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was staged,’ but I would nonetheless like to discuss the Hands Off Syria campaign, a campaign that also advocates misinformation regarding the chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

But let’s backtrack for a second--what is the Hands Off Syria campaign? From the organization’s Facebook page, they state that “only the people of Syria have the right to determine who commands the Syrian state. The people of Syria should be left to determine their own future and THE WEST MUST CEASE AND DESIST FROM AGITATION AND ARMING TERRORISTS.” In all caps even. It sounds nice, in theory at least. Is it wrong to support Syrians’ right to self-governance? Ideally, of course not.

 But in practice, such ‘pure intentions’ turn out to be fruitless, and in the end, I think extremely harmful to Syrian civilians themselves. As some background, the US-led forces have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIS in parts of Syria and Iraq since late 2014 with a few thousand definite civilian casualties from these.1 In the interim, the US government has only explicitly targeted Syrian government sites on two occasions, the first of which being at the Shayrat airbase on April 7, 2017 in response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, and the second being at chemical weapon storage facilities just over a week ago on April 14, 2018 in response another set of chemical weapons attacks in Douma, Syria. And it has been precisely only for these two instances that the Hands Off Syria campaign became radically more vocal about foreign intervention in Syria, pushing an agenda that the US didn’t have sufficient evidence that the Syrian government gassed its own people recently instead of islamic terrorists or the sort. But what then of those airstrikes I mentioned above? Are those civilian casualties not important too? Or the hundreds of thousands of Syrian lives lost to Assad’s own government itself? American imperialism may not be okay, but let’s set that aside: so, what about Russian and Iranian intervention and imperialism? Why silent then too? Was it “let the Syrian people decide their own future” or was it “let Syrian people decide their own future alone, but ok Russia is allowed to back that government as long as we’re not in.” I entirely expect that the Hands Off Syria campaign was started either by Syrian intelligence, or Russian intelligence. After all, the Hands Off Syria facebook page does like Assad’s page too. Such hypocrisy. The campaign hides behind pleasant sounding ideals, but in practice, works to discredit any US intervention that may help civilians while validating Russian interference, even if it comes at the expense of Syrian civilian lives. Of course, Trump's intentions behind the recent strike were questionable and narcissistic, but that's another topic for discussion *lol*.

 So yes, I think Hands Off Syria is deceptive, but why does it get to be as popular as it is? Several years ago, I was walking into Coffman when the a socialist student club member handed me a flyer advocating for the same exact thing, urging me to vote against any intervention in Syria. So clearly, the ideals align with socialist foreign policy as well. Let the citizens of a country decide their own outcome, and let's reduce our military expenditure and foreign presence to minimize international tensions. Naturally, this logic also works because it sounds, at least on the surface level, more humane to Syrian citizens themselves. The mission doesn't come with the implication that it only serves to oppose US intervention on Syrian government sites specifically--rather, it claims to oppose any foreign intervention. In a perfect world and aside from Syria massacring its own people, it's easy to understand why this mission would be favorable.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/25/world/middleeast/airstrikes-iraq-syria-civilian-casualties.html