In language inspired by Private Eye’s Dave Spart after he’s shared the Big Brother house for too long with George Galloway, the Stop the War Coalition has abandoned humanity.
There is not the slightest doubt about what is happening. It was on our television screens last night, and if the STW demonstrators who marched so bravely against Broadcasting House yesterday were not sitting in the pub celebrating, they would have seen it too.
Driven out of their homes by ISIS, thousands of Yazidis are huddling under a few trees as the only shelter from a relentless Middle-Eastern sun, on a rock-strewn mountain. They have no food, no sanitation and apart from that recently dropped by American aeroplanes, no water. Hundreds have already died of thirst, hunger and disease.
A few miles away – just 3 km in the latest reports – a well-armed and fanatical army is waiting to massacre them. IS makes no secret, indeed revels, in the fact that it plans to commit genocide.
Whatever your political views about the Iraq war, or about Israel’s attack on Gaza, or US imperialism or international capitalism here, one would have thought, is a clear cut and unambiguous evil that has to be stopped.
And what do the smug, self-righteous bigots of the Stop the War Coalition say? Keep the Yanks out.
“Emergency humanitarian help to Yezidi, Christian, Shia communities and all victims of ISIS is essential. But this has to be done through genuine humanitarian organisations and the UN (like in Gaza).”
Like in Gaza. Or perhaps like in Rwanda when despite the presence of flabby second rate UN “peacekeepers” under the auspices of a vague, well-meaning mandate, the world stood by as genocide was committed. Or perhaps like in Srebrenica where Dutch UN forces stood by as 8000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred.
The UN is an utter irrelevance at the moment. People are dying of hunger and thirst on death marches through the Mesopotamian mountains.
They need food, water and shelter for their immediate survival and it matters not who provides it. It could come from America or Israel or Iran or North Korea. It is irrelevant.
But they also need ISIS to be stopped, preferably for good, but at least for long enough for the Yazidis to escape. That means bombs, missiles and machine guns. For the time being the Kurdish fighters seem to be in retreat, and only the Americans can help.
But any US involvement would be anathema to STW:
It is sickening to see Obama and the Western media shedding crocodile tears for the Iraqi people, after the US-led occupation pulverised Iraq as a society and killed a million of its people. It is obscene to now suggest that the US will fight terrorism and protect the Iraqi people, when the rise of terrorism was the direct result of the US-led invasion of the country.
Sickening? Crocodile tears?
Watch this extraordinary video of a Yazidi MP in the Iraqi Parliament pleading – with real tears that eventually overwhelm her – for action. She is not asking for a UN resolution. She is not asking for US imperialism out of Iraq. She is asking for anyone, anyone, who can help to save her innocent people from annihilation. She was asking more than a week ago.
At least President Obama has tried, at the last minute, to do something to save them.
Not according to STW, for whom the whole ISIS phenomenon is “clearly” a US Zionist plot:
“It is clear … that ISIS is serving Israeli and US economic, political and military objectives in the region.”
And all the loathsome idiots of the Stop the War Coalition can do is march and chant and demand that US imperialists get lost. Perhaps it makes them feel better.
They are inexpressibly repulsive.
Great post!
You’re beginning to sound more like me.
LOL!
Doesn’t, in itself, make it great. But thanks anyway!
The purpose of any demonstration is to make the demonstrator feel good, so I expect the types who marched in favour of the Hamas gangsters regard yesterday as a success.
But I had not previously come across the theory that ISIS is all part of the American/Zionist plot.
A very common theory in the muslim world – ISIS is/was funded by the Saudis and it’s a common conception amongst many Arabs and Muslims that the Saudi government is an extension of the US government. This conspiracy theory has gained credibility by the failure of the US to attack ISIS, despite it clearly threatening the (supposedly) US backed Iraqi government. The theory goes that, without ISIS, Shia-dominated Iraq was sliding irreversibly into the Iranian sphere of influence. Also, the Iraqis did not want the US to keep their forces in Iraq and no agreement had been reached on the status of a continued US military presence. Consequently, there was a push by the Saudis and Americans to destabilise the Shia government through ISIS and make it reliant on continued US military backing. There is even a popular conspiracy theory making the rounds that claims the leader of ISIS is a mossad agent.
In any event, the fact remains that ISIS was created mainly by US actions – the invasion of Iraq, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, the marginalisation of Iraqi sunnis, the arming, funding and training of Syrian rebels. I think the general concensus is that, if ISIS was not delibrately created by the US, then it has been incredibly incompetent and irresponsible in any event and that it should stay out of things.
Personally, I do agree that ISIS must be stopped. However, I don’t think that the US has the inclination or ability to stop it and that their involvement will just make matters worse.
There is also a myth in the Arab world that Israeli coins and stamps and banknotes show Israel as extending from the Nile to the Euphrates and that there is a similar image carved over the main door of the Knesset. Anyone living outside the Arab world who cares to look will know what lies those are.
I agree with the entire story but “It is clear … that ISIS is serving Israeli and US economic, political and military objectives in the region.” sounds like a comment from their website and not an actual story. Please clarify
They’re a revolting bunch of cowardly, hypocritical turncoats who are in the pay of Islamist crazies. It seems astonishing they still draw support anymore, but the few people still commenting on their Facebook page (with its Stalinist mass blockings for anyone not toeing the party line – though calling Jews pigs seems to be actively encouraged) appear to have obvious mental health problems.
Ooops, you can of course, delete one.
I’ve gone with “revolting” rather than “loathsome.”