The anti-imperialist movement ‘must hold true to principles’

Cody Urban, General Secretary of International League of Peoples’ Struggle – U.S., gave this edited presentation on the United National Antiwar Coalition’s webinar (youtu.be/2QEn3wllu2Q) on the U.S. role in Syria.

If there’s one message, one sentence that we need to walk away with from this webinar and from this moment, it is that Syria is being carved up so foreign powers can plunder it. That’s what this comes down to, it’s what all the speakers before me said. We can’t stop emphasizing this.

The U.S. has been after Syria’s oil and resources even before there was a country of Syria. And with the new Western-backed government, they are even more interested. Western imperialists will play the heroes and claim to give aid. And if the government opens their industries to foreign investment, [the imperialists] will dangle lifting some sanctions.

The zionists want to invade more and more settlements as part of their expansionist, messianic “greater israel” project, and if you look at all the air strikes they have done, it is the most expensive air campaign the zionists have ever done in the history of the zionist entity. They have cleared off the land from Palestine to Iran, leaving it open as an undefended flying field if they want to launch an air invasion of Iran.

And let’s not forget Türkiye playing such an opportunistic role in this as it jumps into a feeding frenzy of power. President  Recep Tayyip Erdogan is flexing his muscles as his neo-ottoman empire image as part of the struggle at home. He says Aleppo is an inherent part of Türkiye. So again, Syria is being carved up so that foreign powers can plunder it.

How do we move forward as an anti-war movement, an anti-imperialist movement in the U.S.? I know there are many well-meaning people who hesitate to take a position, because there are many different opinions of the Assad government among Syrian people. And living behind the curtain of western propaganda, how can we know what’s true?

Hold true to principles!

What we have to do is hold true to principles, so ILPS and UNAC and many other organizations hold up self-determination of all peoples, sovereignty of countries, opposition to foreign interventions. If Syrian people want to take a direction in their country, then we have no right to interfere with that. But that’s what the U.S. has done since decades ago.

The U.S. is not good for Syrian people. The U.S. is not good for Kurdish people. The U.S. opportunistically says it is for Kurdish people, just to draw more Kurds into the proxy force of the Syrian Democratic Forces. But while the U.S. is doing that, it is also backing Türkiye, which is seeking the annihilation of Kurdish people. The U.S. is not a friend of the Syrian people as a whole.

We need to build a movement in the U.S. that is clear on the principle that the U.S. has no right to intervene. It needs to be a broad movement. A shining example of that was Resist NATO. We marched, hundreds of people, against NATO, the most proactive military alliance that played a role in Syria. We held a counter summit of hundreds of people, and over 400 took to the streets in front of the White House.

We are not going to stop there because NATO is going to keep orchestrating interventions on its war path; already there are forces ready to oppose NATO at next year’s summit in The Hague. Because in The Hague they will be talking about how to escalate war in Ukraine and [disable] Russia. 

They will also be talking about Syria and other forms of intervention and plundering around the world, and we have to show up and stop this. So I want to invite everyone here on January 11 for the online launch of the Resist NATO campaign! (bit.ly/resistNATOlaunch)

We have to build this movement, make it nationwide, make it global. We have to make it undefeatable. The Axis of Resistance will never be defeated, with the people of Palestine and Syria and all around the world, because the people united will never be defeated. All power to all the people! Long live international solidarity!