From Stop the War Coalition (UK) National Officer Chris Nineham’s
“We won't stand by …”
Editing by Carolyn Bennett
Western powers’ massive aerial onslaught on Syria will drastically
worsen the already dire situation that was aided, armed and abetted by foreign states.
The rush to war must be stopped.
Unspeakable cruelty and consequence
The desperate refugee crisis shows how the country is riven (torn
apart) by a civil war already stoked by outside intervention. The joint UN/Arab
League representative to the country, Moqtar Lomani, said this past Monday that Syria was
in danger of tearing itself apart along sectarian lines.
Threats of western intervention have already accelerated
this process. Reports show that the number of people fleeing Damascus for
Lebanon has risen by a factor of six since [U.S. President Barack] Obama last week made
the decision to push for an attack.
How can a massive aerial onslaught by Western powers on
Syria do anything but drastically worsen this situation?
The cruise missiles being primed for launch on U.S. ships
and submarines are themselves deadly weapons. 
An assault on a scale designed to ‘degrade’ [Syrian
President Bashar al-] Assad’s military will kill large numbers of innocents.
It can only further wrench apart the fault lines in Syria
and across the region. There will be immediate retaliation from the regime,
possibly from regional supporters; maybe from Russia.
Antiwar Movement NOW
Anti-war protests past and present helped create the
conditions in which Members of the British Parliament felt they had to take a
stand against [UK Prime Minister David] Cameron and [British Foreign Secretary
William] Hague’s kneejerk warmongering. That vote in turn influenced the U.S.
president to take his plans to the Congress.
Protests must now increase in intensity to send a message to
Washington ─ that the world will not stand by and let the United States plunge
the Middle East into a wider war.
Sources and notes
“We won't stand by. Obama’s war can be stopped” by Chris
Nineham, Stop the War Coalition UK, September 3, 2013. http://stopwar.org.uk/news/we-won-t-stand-by-obama-s-war-can-be-stopped
CHRIS NINEHAM is one of the founding members, now one of the
National Officers of the STOP THE WAR COALITION in the United Kingdom. He was
one of the main organizers of the February 15, 2003 anti-war protest against
the invasion on Iraq.; and he has written widely on the anti-war movement and
the anti-capitalist movement as well as on the media, modernism and cultural theory.
Nineham was a leading member of Globalize Resistance, the
anti-globalization network that mobilized thousands of protests in Genoa, Italy
(2001) and elsewhere and he played an important role in the European and World
Social Forums.
STOP THE WAR was founded in September 2001, in the weeks
following the events of September 11, 2001, when U.S. President George W. Bush
announced the ‘war on terror’.
Stop the War Coalition (UK) has since been dedicated to
ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing the troops home and forcing
the British government to change its disastrous foreign policies. STWC has initiated
many campaigns around these issues and are also committed to opposing sanctions
and military attacks on Iran, supporting Palestinian rights, opposing racism
and defending civil liberties. http://stopwar.org.uk/about
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