The Free Syrian Army have just kicked US Special Forces out of Syria

I can’t wait to see how the Assad-apologists of Stop the War Coalition, Salon, Jacobin, 21st Cenutry Wire etc. will explain this, but here’s the prediction: “this is proof that the FSA have been extremists all along”.

The useful idiots in the “alternative” media and “anti-war” movements who’ve been promoting the fantasy that “the US is trying to get rid of the Syrian regime” for 5 years – whilst ignoring the actual (declared) US policy of regime-preservation intervention in the country – have become the divinely-ordained unwitting Trojan Horses of US imperialism in Syria. Yes, those same people who’ve been the prime apologists of Assad in the name of “anti-imperialism” have actually been unwittingly covering up imperialism’s actual main intervention in Syria. So how many people know about the military bases that the US has constructed on Syrian territory? Or the US special forces that are fighting on Syrian territory? How many people know of the thousands who’ve left their homes or been besieged by the US airforce and its YPG/SDF allies on the ground? Or the US flags that are flying on Syrian territory? Not many – you see the “proxy force” through which the US has been able to do all this, the Assad-collaborating YPG are “left-wing” just like them, so “Western imperialism” doesn’t really count. (Also they don’t have beards and aren’t as easy to demonise with orientalist imagery as those Allahu  Akbar shouting “Islamist savages” (i.e. the “so-called” Syrian opposition)).

No one knows that the only major protests against the Americans, since 2014 and until recently, have been by rebel populations. So no one knows of the FSA rejecting America’s intervention, repeatedly since 2014, a rejection the YPG refused. No one knows that the FSA were the first to fight ISIS in 2013, and that the Americans not only refused to support them, but later actively blockaded help in that battle. Why? Because whilst the Americans “aren’t supporting ISIS” (ask the thousands of people who’ve been killed by the Americans in the name of that fight), they allowed it to grow.

How many people know of the tens of thousands of airstrikes by the US in the name of the renewed war on terror, or the 2,000 civilians and 45,000 fighters (be they radicalised or not – the US is a bigger terrorist than them) who’ve been killed by the US airforce in the last two years? Well not many, because the narrative has been that actually the US has been in effect supporting ISIS – or ISIS-likes – to get rid of the “real target”: Assad (who we’ve been coordinating intelligence and airstrikes since 2014 with the regime’s own admission) and Iran (whose militias of course we’re actively giving an airforce in Iraq). ubsequently those who’ve been promoting the theory that actually it is Iran that is under attack by the US, not ISIS have devised the following formula: The West backs ISIS and other extremist groups = denial/non-recognition of tens of thousands of airstrikes by the West against ISIS and other groups = denial of casualties arising from non-existent airstrikes = denial of scale of suffering caused by the West

How many people know about Assad stating that the West is passing him intelligence to hit opponents? Or Iraqi militias entering in their tens of thousands from the regime the Americans put in place next door?

Syrian moderates? Ha, don’t make us laugh. No, all the Free Syrian Army, all the 100,000 rebels, are extremists/ISIS-lite. Those who protested in 2011 all disappeared or became extremists. Huh? Islamophobia? What Islamophobia? Well you’ve just repeated Assad’s claim that millions of his population are terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. “Pfft, only the far-right do Islamophobia”. Well maybe that’s true – and considering that the far-right also repeat verbatim the same “leftist” Assad apologism, maybe idiotic, orientalist, Western-narcissist, Islamophobic, racialist Assad-apologists theoretically on the “left” should be labelled as far-right. They’ve earned it.

To keep calling them “anti-imperialists” would be a disservice to the word: they have ignored overwhelmingly the major role of Western (US) imperialism in this conflict. They have unwittingly served as the Trojan Horses of American imperialism. They are the “counter-counter-imperialists”.

The result? The USA’s role in actively supporting (not “non-intervening” as some would have it) a 21st century genocide – something which would normally be inconceivable because of an aware public – has been unknown to the world.

Thanks, you posturing fake fuckers. Hope you’ve enjoyed your moments in the sun.

The Syria Solidarity Campaign will post a full-report on the US role in Assad’s genocide. Until then, anyone interested can read their event description (for a protest in front of the American embassy in London a few months ago) and this piece by Michael Karadjis on “who has the US bombed, bombed for and bombed with” in Syria.

2011 is our 1968, but were unfortunate enough to be Muslim instead of leftists. Aleppo is our Guernica, but we were unfortunate enough to be persecuted by “secular” fascists instead of “religious” ones.

Long live the Syrian revolution. Long live 2011 and the struggles of the Arab masses for freedom and self-determination.

UPDATES: The US has reportedly bombed rebels near the town of Al-Rai (where the incident took place).

Furthermore, the “Ahrar al-Sharqia” FSA brigade, which was involved in the expulsion, have released their statement. The SSC post also provides context for their anger, and how they’ve been insultingly undermined for years by the Americans in every single way.

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