Stop the STWC




I published a post about the ridiculous antics of the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) the other day and then I came across this opinion piece by Rob Marchant in The Independent.

Now I don't follow developments in STWC that closely because I think they are motivated by a nasty brand of anti-western politics, but I agree with Rob Marchant that the organisation is now really against 'war' or 'wars' - they just want to pick and choose which ones they support.

So maybe the time has finally come to set up STSTWC - Stop the Stop the War Coalition.  

The Stop the War Coalition should do us all a favour and disband

Its original aims might have been noble, but it no longer represents mainstream opinion, and has been hijacked by the far-left

By ROB MARCHANT - The Independent

Earlier this month, Stop the War Coalition’s (StWC) website published an article explaining why fears of ISIS massacre were a deliberate exaggeration, worked up by Western governments in order to drag us into another war in Iraq: “a false story of a massive Yazidi crisis”.

But, of course, it wasn’t. Soon afterwards, there were real, brutal attacks on the Yazidis which sacked the village of Kojo, killing and abducting its inhabitants. Not thinking that anyone might have saved the original wording of the article, this claim about there not being a Yazidi crisis mysteriously disappeared without remark.

We could be generous, and conclude that this was merely a very poor analysis of the situation, rather than a desperate attempt to make it fit the desired narrative, and one which Isis would naturally have delighted in. Let us also leave to one side for the moment the risible idea that Western governments are somehow dying to get into another war in the Middle East, when the reverse is clearly true. It is difficult to remember a period of post-war history in which world leaders were less interested in intervening anywhere. Just this weekend Obama said he had no strategy for Isis in Syria, while Ed Miliband has tip-toed around the prospect of intervention in an op-ed for The Independent this weekend.

But the remarkable thing about the story is that it reveals the logical contortions which StWC has been reduced to. In 2003, the argument was simple: the West should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a legitimate view, whether or not you agreed. Many who did not share the Stoppers’ far-left or pacifist leanings showed sympathy, and a highly successful rally was held in London which was attended by a broad range of politicians and public.

Then came 7/7. StWC condemned the bombings, but – and there was invariably a “but” which followed condemnation of a terrorist act – “The only way to end the bombings is to withdraw from Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine”.

But the terrorism predates both Afghanistan and Iraq; today, the West has withdrawn from both countries. And yet, this week, an American journalist was brutally beheaded in Iraq. If there is one thing which is abundantly clear, it is that terrorist acts will not end through the “right” actions by the West. And so the slide began.

Later came Syria, which tied them up in knots: the aggressor, Bashar al-Assad, was clearly committing genocide against his own people, but he was also someone with whom some of StWC’s members had expressed sympathy. For example, at one of its meetings last year it gave a platform to Assad cheerleader Issa Chaer.



The Stop the War Coalition of today does not represent mainstream or even consistent opinion, if it ever did. Its leaders are hardly mainstream: its former chair, Andrew Murray, is still a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain; there are long-standing historic links to the Socialist Workers’ Party; and vice-president Kamal Majid is a founding member of the Stalin Society. Uncle Joe, you may remember, was not a great valuer of human life, although I am sure Mr Majid would disagree.

However noble the aims which some supporters of Stop the War may have once attributed to it, it is nowadays little more than a pressure group of the far-left, with some highly dubious, inconsistent and sometimes borderline-deranged views.

On Syria and again on Isis, StWC have shown they don’t really want to “stop the war” at all; just the cherry-picked wars they disagree with (normally those which involve the US or Israel). In the meantime, they are prepared for genocide to continue, as long as it's Arabs killing other Arabs.

If StWC really wants to help the inhabitants of the Middle East as much as it purports to, it needs to get its priorities straight. Better still, it could just disband altogether.



Medicine for the Dead (22 August 2014)


Here's an excellent article by James Bloodworth writing in The Independent which just goes to show that not everyone on the left of politics is an apologist for the increasingly ridiculous arguments of the Stop the War Coalition (STWC).

Today Isis is attacking the Middle East. Tomorrow it’ll be the West

Those who have spent the past 10 years warning against intervention need to wake up

By JAMES BLOODWORTH - The Independent


The reported murder of the American journalist James Foley is further proof that Western countries must not be squeamish when it comes to helping the Iraqis and the Kurds to defeat Isis.

Liberals are very good at calling for the bombs to stop, but now is the time for anyone of a remotely progressive temperament to call for an intensification of the military campaign against Isis. Indeed, let more bombs fall on those who behead journalists and enslave Kurdish and Iraqi women.

The latest atrocity by Isis ought to drive home the point that those committing such crimes are not misunderstood men who have been "radicalised" by Western imperialism, but rather are attempting to use our concern for human suffering against us by proudly brandishing their own disregard for it — all to create a hellish and totalitarian Caliphate that would make death feel like a deliverance.

Indeed it bears repeating: the existence of Isis (as opposed to the group’s growth) is in no sense "our" fault. The old communist turned anti-communist Arthur Koestler once said that the difference between a person of a liberal and absolutist mentality was that the absolutist viewed wrong ideas as crimes committed against future generations.

It followed that wrong ideas must be punished in a similar way to other crimes. In the case of Isis this involves taking women and girls as slaves and murdering men who fail to convert to their particular noxious strand of Islam. If you believe that you are creating heaven on earth then anything and anyone that stands in your way must be squashed underfoot like a rotten apple.

Those who have spent the past 10 years trying to neuter Britain and the United States into international passivity need now to wake up. It seems clear that if the gung-ho 2000s showed the consequences of Western military adventurism, then recent events have demonstrated the limits of trying to stop the world on its axis and climb off.

Isis have germinated so rapidly not because of George Bush and Tony Blair, but because Western governments decided at some point that it would be acceptable for Bashar al-Assad to drop explosives on the Syrian people in order to keep power. It may come as a surprise to those MPs who whooped and hollered when the Commons voted against military intervention in Syria last year to learn that they did not "stop the war".

Judging by the macabre video which appeared on YouTube yesterday evening, James Foley's murderer appeared to have a British accent. We demand that our politicians do not put British "boots on the ground" in the Middle East yet it is our society which appears to be incubating at least some of the fighters currently chopping off heads in Iraq and Syria. When you live in a country that is failing to prevent at least some members of its own society from travelling to destroy somebody else’s, all talk of "keeping out" is little more than sanctimonious rubbish.

Either way, if you believe that, for whatever reason, Britain is at fault for the rise of Isis you should invariably want Britain to make amends by helping the Kurds and Iraqis to defeat it. Similarly, if you claim to be an anti-fascist you should waste no time in calling for a recognisably anti-fascist policy from the government – the bombing of Isis positions, for example. Indeed, for any genuine internationalist the next course of action is a straightforward one: to help the Iraqis and Kurds to kill those that will otherwise kill them.

For those that are inclined to bury their head in the sand a warning is probably more appropriate; in which case I will quote something a Kurdish friend told me on a recent anti-Isis demonstration in London. "Today they are attacking the Middle East; tomorrow it’ll be the West". In other words, just as you cannot ignore climate change because you do not live on a melting ice cap, Syria and Iraq are not someone else's problem because you have a mortgage and a credit card and live in a prosperous liberal democracy.

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