According to a StWC press release: “Anti-war groups from across the world will meet to oppose any further expasion (sic) of NATO and demand an end to the occupation of Afghanistan.” Another rally will feature “leading speakers from the peace movement.”
That these are “anti-war” groups and that these speakers are from “the peace movement” is the first and biggest lie in what I know will be a flood of many more.
These are NOT “anti-war” campaigners. They are not pacifists. They are not conscientious objectors. They are certainly not against all wars. They are not against the use of armed force. And, perhaps most importantly, they are not even against all sides in current conflicts.
Just as groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Labour Action for Peace (LAP) were infested with shills for the other side, so the people invited to speak for the “Stop the War Coalition” are only against the use of military force if it is Western military force.
StWC members are well practiced at appearing moderate enough to keep the Birkenstock brigade on-side. But consider this. The Muslim Council of Britain, a member of the StWC, recently denounced those Muslim protesters who turned out in Luton to rage against British soldiers returning from Iraq. But for what? In essence, only for being crass and giving the tabloid press an excuse to drum up Islamophobia. At the same time they stated that they “understood” the “widespread opposition to the disastrous war in Iraq”. Similarly, their StWC colleage, George Galloway is notable for having praised the “military operations” of the so-called Iraqi Resistance who Galloway claims are “writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars” with with their Kalashnikovs! Some peacenik!
And, as habibi reported earlier today, the MCB’s Daud Abdullah recently signed a document praising the military work of Hamas and appears to be endorsing the view that the Royal Navy participating in stopping the flow of arms to Hamas is an act of war against Gaza. Some peacenik! And of course, Dr Abdullah is a speaker at the StWC rally!
Similarly, the StWC seems to be selling Moazzam Begg as a peacenik. I suppose we’re meant to believe that he’s a former hippy, and was apprehended in Afghanistan while placing flowers (not poppies, of course) down the barrels of Taliban rifles.
And of course, there’s cookie-cutter useful idiot, Kate Hudson, leader of the CND, an organisation too stupid to twig onto the fact that the Soviet’s might have a compelling interest in the West unilatererally disarming. Not much harm done by CND traitors, argues Paul Lashmar in The Independent, but if this is true, it was just our good fortune, not the infiltrator’s lack of trying. And they’re still trying.
Of course, this same sorry lot have no idea what do do about the theocratic fascists, the Taliban. As their malignant influence spreads into neighbouring Pakistan, as more women are forced into burkas, as more teachers are murdered and schools burned down because they educate girls, as the flirtatious are stoned to death and secularists murdered in their wake, what does the StWC recommend? Of course – western forces pull out of Afghanistan and leave them to it.
It is a position so ludicrous, so reckless and senseless, that the only way to make sense of it is to accept that it is in the interests of the enemies of democracy. Or peace.