When did the left become pro-war?

I wrote this two years ago but I didn’t publish it because I hoped that I was wrong. Looking at the world now, I’m heartbroken to see how accurate my 2020 analysis actually was.

*Trigger Warning* War, violence, bloodshed, bombs, death, refugees, rape

Screenshot Ukraine’s President Zelenky is callling for the US and it’s allies to enforce a no-fly zone, which would literally begin WWIII. Now leftists are also calling for that same thing, thinking they are being humanitarian, not realizing they are playing into the hands of the military industrial complex.
Image description: Ukraine President Zelensky is on a huge screen addressing a huge crowd. On stage on either side of the screen are four US flags, two on either side of the screen. Zelensky himself is wearing an olive green tshirt, sitting in a red leather chair, with a white background behind him and a Ukrainian flag next to him. The audience seated on chairs are all facing forward watching him and cheering.

Here it is, my analysis from 2020:

It feels like whiplash.

I woke up one morning and all I saw in my social media feed was war war war, let’s send troops here, let’s get involved over there, let’s bomb the world. All coming from my own leftist community members, who are supposedly anti-imperialist.

What the hell.

I remember marching against the Iraq war as a teenager. I remember marching against the war in Afghanistan. I remember holding vigils, mourning all the needless deaths of these greedy wars for fossil fuels and other resources. We were all leftists resisting those wars, people who believed in the rights of different peoples to decide their own fate in their own countries. The left was anti-war and anti-imperialist and proud of it.

A lot of people seem to have forgotten those days.

Because if Obama was waging a war, it was OK. Toppling Gaddafi in Libya was OK. A regime change operation in Syria was OK. Extending the war in Afghanistan was OK. Droning children in Pakistan was OK. Keeping prisoners locked up in Guantanamo Bay without trial was OK. Obama took us from having two wars under Bush to seven wars under himself and it was OK. Everyone was just fine with it and if they weren’t fine with it, they didn’t exactly speak up about it either. I still get into arguments with leftists who think that Obama wasn’t as bad as I make him out to be.

Seven wars…

And now we want more? More war in Syria. More war in Ukraine. It’ll go on. Venezuela. Afghanistan. Yemen. Iran. Russia. China. And on and on and on.

Russia and China are nuclear armed countries, just like the US. Think what that means for the entire planet.

The only presidential candidate who vigorously denounced these wars and US imperialism, Tulsi Gabbard, was smeared by every possible establishment figure to the point where it was impossible for her to be the Democratic nominee for President. They did everything they could to destroy her reputation and dismiss her candidacy.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump ran on a platform of ending these endless wars and that’s one of the reasons why people supported him instead of warmonger Hillary Clinton. It’s one of the reasons why Tulsi Gabbard is so popular on the right too. Her anti-war message resonates with them. They’re tired of war. But the Democratic establishment won’t allow her to be the nominee, no matter what.

We’re going to lose this election no matter who wins.

“But no,” the left argues, “it’s because we want to protect democracy and feminism! What about the Kurds? What about dictators like Assad?”

*sigh*

The Kurdish eco-feminists of Rojava would be in a much better situation if the US hadn’t armed their chief enemies, Al Qaeda and ISIS, and if the US hadn’t waged war in Iraq and Syria, both countries where Kurds have traditional territories. If we’d used diplomacy to persuade the secular Assad to create more peaceful autonomy for the Kurdish people in Syria, the Kurdish feminists would be safer. Not safe, but safer. War is never good for women or anyone. Instead, the US bombed Syria, and spent years fighting a proxy war through extremist fanatics to oust Assad from power. The US justified it with a falsified story; that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people. That story turned out to be lies. Meanwhile, the Kurds are in a crisis, surrounded by extremists in Syria, Erdogan’s ambitions to recreate the Ottoman empire in Turkey, Iraq’s instability (which the US caused), and now this new proposed war with Iran that the neocons in Trump’s administration want to wage.

So how were the Kurds made more safe by US troops? At what point did the US protect them, other than for a short while and only for US imperial self interests? Since when is the presence of US troops ever actually good for anyone? The Kurds allying themselves with the US was a terrible mistake. Assad, a dictator but a dictator who protected minorities, was always their best bet. We all saw this when #45 pulled his troops out of Rojava, and the Kurds had no choice but to ally with Assad to defend against Erdogan and ISIS.

Dictators are everywhere. We can’t just bomb whatever country we feel like because we don’t like the person running it. Funnily enough, forcing people to do what you want them to do with guns and bombs is dictator behavior. That makes us the authoritarian tyrants, my leftist community. We’re the dictators.

Dictators don’t actually go away when you bomb countries. In fact, more dictators spring up in the chaos and you end up in never-ending war and bloodshed that means the most vulnerable — the poor people of that country — are caught in the crossfire. Those people get killed, raped, trafficked, starved, poisoned, and if they survive they are forced to flee as refugees.

We’ve seen the horrifying footage of Syrian refugees for years because of this war. Remember the Syrian baby who fell from the boat into the Mediterranean sea and drowned, washing up on the beach? Remember how everyone shared the heartbreaking picture of that baby’s helpless corpse like tragedy porn but no one stopped to question why that child had died. I won’t show that picture or any of the other horrifying images that leftists shared on their social media as tragedy porn while no one actually protested Obama’s war in Syria.

The lack of critical thinking is appalling. So many Syrian refugees for so many years…

Now the lack of understanding about what led to this crisis of the Kurds is appalling me too.

So what about our fascist US government, leftist community? It seems to me that if we think regime change wars are acceptable in other countries, then we should have one here too, right? Shouldn’t we have a regime change war in the US? Shouldn’t all the other countries in the world wage war against the US to get rid of Dictator Donald Trump (or whoever else is our president) and our corporate controlled government, so that the world can have democracy and progressive policies? If the world could topple the Fascist Tyrannical Dictatorship of the USA, there would be a hope of real climate action that might even save the world from mass extinction. Shouldn’t they all get together and bomb us into oblivion? Bombing fixes everything, right? We’re a bunch of authoritarian dictators, after all. Don’t we deserve it, just like Assad and all of Syria? How many people have we gassed and poisoned with our fossil fuels and chemical weapons and industrial agriculture and pesticides and GMO seeds and single use plastics and never-ending consumption? That means that the rest of the world should bomb the US in a regime change war, regardless of the US casualties it causes, right?

But no? You don’t want that? Why not?

The hypocrisy of my own community disturbs me. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why they decided to trust the media. I don’t know why they believe the propaganda.

If we created actual shared prosperity among nations, in peace, as well as cross-cultural dialogue that focuses on the needs of the most marginalized and stigmatized, that would go much further towards creating democracy and dis-empowering dictatorships than waging war ever would. We could change everything.

We don’t have to go along with endless wars. Instead, let’s work on peace, healing, justice.

I hope that saying this won’t get me kicked out of the leftist community. Regardless of whether it does, the leftist community needs to do serious soul searching. I want peace. I want healing. I want justice. War is none of those things.

It’s now March 2022 and we’re on the brink of WWIII. It’s now clear to me that if Obama or another Democrat president had started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the left wouldn’t have protested those wars. The left would have cheered instead. The left didn’t “become” pro-war. The left was always pro-war as long as their president waged that war. This is why US imperialism still exists in 2022. The war machine never stops because it’s protected by the left under a Democrat president, and protected by the right under a Republican president.

If you want to live, let go of the pro-war propaganda and be an anti-imperialist regardless of who is president. It doesn’t matter what part of the political spectrum you think you belong to. War kills everyone. Stop the war machine to defend Mother Earth. There is no future for you or anyone else if you don’t.