{"id":1119,"date":"2015-12-14T01:35:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T01:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2015-12-14T01:43:25","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T01:43:25","slug":"stop-the-war-coalition-hypocrisy-i-think-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/12\/stop-the-war-coalition-hypocrisy-i-think-not.html","title":{"rendered":"Stop the War Coalition hypocrisy? I think not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quite recently, I tweeted that the Stop the War Coalition is correct<\/a> to only criticise the wars backed and endorsed by the British government. I was praising an article by John Wight<\/a>. There is no Stop the War Coalition hypocrisy when it comes to issues like Syria or other perceived “enemy” states like Russia.<\/p>\n

Peace activists criticise their own government’s wars, not “enemy” states. They don’t join in the war chorus of condemning “the enemy”, talking about their atrocities, and saying they deserve to be bombed. This should be obvious to everyone, but it isn’t. There are actually unbelievable, total idiots who think the job of peace activists should be to condemn other countries and support war against them.<\/p>\n

A certain Peter Tatchell<\/a> condemns British peace activists of the Stop the War Coalition for their\u00a0“inaction” against the government of Syria. I wonder what anti-war action he might have had in mind. Starting a war, perhaps?<\/p>\n

In Tatchell’s\u00a0view of the world, Stop the War is hypocritical. It needs to attack the “enemy”, not our own government. Just look at Stop the War. They\u00a0will criticise wars led by the United Kingdom and its American allies, as well as others such as Saudi Arabia, but they are\u00a0suspiciously silent on criticising Russia and Syria!<\/p>\n

Fine, there should be equal criticism of all countries, but by whom? Stop the War is a British group. It lacks the means or the resources to decisively lobby\u00a0any state other than Britain, and has enough difficulty lobbying the government of Britain, which ignores all popular calls to avoid war and wasteful defense spending. In fact, the British government even labels peace activists as “terrorist sympathisers”. Stop the War has far too much work to do in Britain, to get distracted by the apparent warlike actions of distant foreign\u00a0countries\u00a0now.<\/p>\n

What power does Stop the War have to protest\u00a0Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria as Tatchell would like to see? Nothing. It would be an absolute waste of time and resources that the group could have used to pressure its own government to decrease its involvement in foreign wars and the advancement of brutality and oppression in the name of Western\u00a0superiority.<\/p>\n

It will be futile for Tatchell to convince Stop the War to become a pro-war organisation dedicated to supporting the existing media and platforms offering up\u00a0excuses to bomb countries and start wars rather than end them. He is extremely stupid if he persists in such a quest. However, it is more likely that he is a liar and a political enemy of peace activists, as can be clearly identified at his own website. Tatchell’s website states<\/a>:<\/p>\n

(Anti-war groups\u00a0reject)\u00a0the call by Syrian civil society organisations for civilian safe havens and humanitarian corridors; claiming they are calls for western bombing, when they are actually bids to stop Assad\u2019s bombs and save lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Liar.\u00a0In Libya, Tatchell’s fantasy of mass murder was made a reality, using exactly the same words\u00a0the bloody neocon used\u00a0in the\u00a0text of his\u00a0“humanitarian” joke.<\/p>\n

In order to save some civilians whose number was speculated at\u00a050,000\u00a0from Gaddafi who had threatened to annihilate them, NATO intervened to “save lives”. The NATO intervention, which Hillary Clinton bragged about as a great victory, killed a number far in excess of 50,000, and is still taking lives today. Libya is in civil war because of Gaddafi’s overthrow. The dead may number in millions before it is over.<\/p>\n

That blood-stained utopia<\/a>\u00a0is the vision Tatchell is promoting for Syria. In areas controlled by Assad in Syria, life goes on as normal. If there is a military operation to “save lives” from Assad\u00a0it might\u00a0succeed, but at the cost of an even greater number of lives in the areas controlled by Assad, at the cost of destroying all the cities and accomplishments of the Syrian people.\u00a0Tatchell knows this\u00a0will “save lives” in the festering, stinking, diseased areas of death that have been “liberated” from Assad and fallen into the hands of ISIL.<\/p>\n

Tatchell should be on\u00a0blacklists\u00a0of neocon war\u00a0criminals<\/a> and their media collaborators who hallucinate about their\u00a0grand liberal responsibility to kill people. It is people like him who have the blood of the Syrian people on their hands, and who have the blood of Iraq and Libya on their hands. Tatchell\u00a0isn’t morally entitled to open his mouth, much less lecture\u00a0peace activists.<\/p>\n

People like Tatchell are\u00a0the barefaced\u00a0political enemies\u00a0of all protesters who want their country to refrain from immoral and reckless military action.\u00a0They\u00a0would prefer all British peace activists to fall in line with the rest of the social elites\u00a0in beating war drums and celebrating\u00a0the West’s\u00a0righteousness and invincibility. The most offensive thing to them is that their own government might be the real monsters. They live for neocon fantasies claiming Western\u00a0societies\u00a0and states are\u00a0superior.<\/p>\n

Tatchell\u00a0should\u00a0pray anti-war activists don’t get convinced\u00a0illegal\u00a0wars can\u00a0“save lives”, or he is just making\u00a0it okay\u00a0for them to shoot at him for being\u00a0a state war\u00a0trumpet.<\/p>\n

It is not the prerogative\u00a0of citizens of a country to take a keen interest in protesting the policies of a foreign country where it does not affect them. We only have it within our power, or with the sanction of democratic\u00a0norms, to protest our own country’s relations with said countries, if we object to those. While many protesters and writers in Britain may be perceived as protesting a foreign state such as Israel or the United States, in fact their actions (in particular the actions of Stop the War Coalition) are aimed solely at protesting the relations\u00a0of their own country with those other states. This is not because they hate their own ruling regime so passionately that they ignore other regimes, but that they quite logically recognise that their own political right and capability is presently limited to criticising their own country’s government.<\/p>\n

This may one day be different, if there awakens a global consensus-based\u00a0state or civil society<\/a> and corresponding global body politic of the kind starting to pulse through\u00a0through the veins of the internet. But such things\u00a0do\u00a0not have any legitimacy or legality today and the United Nations is firmly against breaches of sovereignty against any country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quite recently, I tweeted that the Stop the War Coalition is correct to only criticise the wars backed and endorsed by the British government. I was praising an article by John Wight. There is no Stop the War Coalition hypocrisy when it comes to issues like Syria or other perceived “enemy” states like Russia. Peace…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,68,71,72,127,67,66,56,69],"tags":[198,1319,976,1320,774,1318,73,1486,28],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antistatism","category-conflict-2","category-conflict-resolution","category-international-relations","category-journalism","category-middle-east","category-politics-2","category-uk","category-violence","tag-britain","tag-civil-society","tag-morality","tag-pressure-groups","tag-protest","tag-stop-the-war-coalition","tag-syria","tag-uk","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nStop the War Coalition hypocrisy? I think not - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stop the War Coalition hypocrisy? 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