
You all know the drill: the GrayZone, really to no one’s surprise, publishes an article so problematic that it should give a haunting pause to those even slightly concerned with the direction of the mainstream “Western” Left. Today, our author is Dan Cohen, an apparent “journalist” working for the very reliable … RT America. (On a related note, is anyone surprised that the GrayZone has pulled in RT bloggers for Syria analysis?).
As to be expected, the problems begin their cruel display at the very title:
By Protecting Syria’s Idlib, the US Created a Safe Haven For Baghdadi and ISIS
Notice a very peculiar sleight-of-hand: Idlib equals Jihad, Idlib equals ISIS, Idlib equals Baghdadi. From the title alone, no one but Daesh apparently resides in the region. It is all but irrelevant that, according to the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, “three million people — two-thirds of them women and children — are” constantly subjected to fascist violence and murder, all while being trapped in the Idlib Ghetto by the Syrian state-security and Russian air-forces. There is no need to speculate on the nature of the conquest of Idlib, especially given the fact that the Assadist oligarchy and Russia see as an appropriate measure to wage a “War on Terror” is to subject random hospitals to targeted bombings and destruction.
“War on Terror” ideology draws in a diverse array of secular missionaries, from Leftists to right-wing ideologues. Consider a well-known Leftist commentator, who happens to be a former American Ambassador to the United Nations: Nikki Haley. She has recently condemned Bernie Sanders for his calls “to take money we give to Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and give it to Gaza, which is run by terrorists”. Notice the ironic parallels between Haley’s statement and Cohen’s article title! Both seek to make an obvious conceptual collapse of millions of people down to these organizations, all while granting, either indirectly or directly, a legitimacy to the more destructive states that constantly wage war against everyone who just so happens to live near them.

— Leftist commentator Nikki Haley
Dan Cohen begins his analysis by making a blunt statement-of-fact (supposedly):
October has been a tough month for the motley crew of self-styled Syria experts and regime-change diehards who spent years cheering on the so-called “moderate rebels.”
First, the “Free Syrian Army” fighters they had long championed were finally and undeniably exposed as the brutal extremists they always were.
All it took for the curtain to be pulled back was for President Trump to green-light a Turkish invasion of Syria, and those once-“moderate” CIA-trained contras that had long terrorized civilians in Syrian government territory were revealed to be Turkish-backed mercenaries, slaughtering and beheading their way throughout the Kurdish-majority regions of northeastern Syria.
Here we see Cohen assigning the status of stasis to various groups of Arabs, usually a trope of crude Orientalist analysis. Surely nothing has occurred from 2011 and 2019 at all, especially anything that could be of any relevance to the dynamics of an uprising in any way. “They” (as opposed to “Us,” or the side that “We” just so happen to support at some point in time) have always been such “Islamofascists,” to borrow the words of the late Christopher Hitchens in 2007, only it is now that “They” have been “exposed as the brutal extremists they always were” — or an Islamic version of the Contras.
(Sidenote: how “They” are the new Contras when lots of these groups opposed U.S. military intervention into Syria, while the regime had welcomed it, is a bit curious [But that’s just needless complications for Cohen really — simply “wouldn’t do” to mention all of that in a GrayZone-RT collaboration]).
Cohen reports:
As the Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported, 21 of the 28 former Syrian “rebel” factions employed in Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria were previously armed or trained by the US.
Couple of things to note. First, Blumenthal — who is on record as to receiving award money from pro-Assad lobby groups — was not the journalist to break this story. As a mere matter of fact, Al-Monitor reported on this before the GrayZone. Secondly, such a fact serves to highlight what an analyst of the Syrian uprising, Michael Karadjis, had pointed out in an article entitled “Issues Behind the Apocalypse: Armed and Civil Rebellion, Class and Islam,” namely that if you reduce numerous regions to slums and “smashed up ruins,” then this will tend to “strengthen ‘Islamist’ forces or anyone who can offer either ‘radical’ action, or God, as some kind of alternative when the entire world has abandoned you.” Furthermore, Karadjis situates this desperate situation as a key component in Turkey’s ability of turning these groups into proxies:
… it is true that, to some extent, the presence of former branches of the FSA or other rebel groups is the result of the defeats of the revolution and increasing dependence on outside “sponsors” with their own interests (the SDF’s reliance on US imperialism and now the Assad regime are similar in this sense). Some may feel they have no choice but to fight for Turkey in the hope that the latter will continue to keep some areas out of regime control in return, especially as the world has long ago dropped any pretence [sic] of support.
…
This is the real world; you get a lifeline from where you can. But the fact of different parts of the Syrian popular masses ended up in opposing camps and killing each other while being manipulated by different sponsoring powers intervening in Syria with their own interests, or by the fascist regime, is the bigger question that will need to be dealt with as part of the post-mortem of the Syrian revolution.
Though this is not the place to get into the American “support” for the uprising, Cohen fundamentally misunderstands it as well as the goals of the United States (he hypes up the “regime change” spook), even though it was key in leading to this situation where rebel forces were so beaten down that only extremism and proxification could flourish. This is to be expected, as Cohen supports a hyper-militarized Warrior State in Syria, of which that can only be justified by hyping the US Versus Regime Common Sense.
Dan Cohen is insistent on collapsing Idlib into a “Safe Haven for ISIS and Baghdadi,” or other “Islamofascists,” even going on to quote “Western” officials when they agree with his “War on Terror” ideology:
- “During a Democratic primary debate, [Tulsi] Gabbard accused Trump of ‘supporting al-Qaeda’ by protecting Idlib with threats of military force.”
- “In July 2017, Brett McGurk, the former special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter ISIL, announced that ‘Idlib province is the largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.’”
- “Meanwhile, the millions of Syrians living within firing range of Idlib have had to live next door to some of the world’s most vicious extremists, withstanding constant mortar shelling and threats of genocide against religious minorities.”
- “Western European governments seemed desperate to preserve Idlib as a holding pen for foreign fighters who originated from their countries, and who threatened to return if their jihadist haven collapsed. EU governments thus implicitly acknowledging the reality of Idlib as a purgatory for the extremist proxies they had used to wreak havoc on Libya and Syria, and which threatened to destabilize their own.”
In short, there is no shortage of “Western” officials willing to collapse entire regions and populations into “The Terrorists!” This has been done for years, ever since George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, targeting the Taliban and al-Qaeda central, and with the Gaza Strip, with the Israelis targeting the Hamas government and Islamic Jihad. The only conclusion to be drawn is that Cohen must draw a distinction between the two:
- The Russian “War on Terror,” which is the Good One
- The American “War on Terror,” which is the Bad One
This is unsurprising, as Cohen is an RT shill — what do we really expect? But it is quite remarkable to see mainstream “Western” Leftists sign on to this type of analysis, one that reproduces the “whiteness” of “War on Terror” ideology as well as its statist focus on conflicts. With regards to the latter, it is curious that Cohen all but ignores the vast amounts of destructive violence that Syrian and Russian forces have subjected upon the Idlib Ghetto, especially when the symmetry of power is so consequential that it really merits no further argument.
It needs to be said that this is not to justify such attacks, just as it is not to justify the indiscriminate missile and mortar attacks by various factions in Gaza by pointing out the vast asymmetries of violence and power between the actors in these conflicts. What Cohen has done here is the adoption of a historically white colonizing epistemology, which “repeatedly projected their violent actions, and their fears of retaliation arising from such violence, on to the Other, even as they were slaughtering them in their millions”. As we have seen with Idlib and Gaza, this involves collapsing entire regions — with multitudes of people — as necessarily violent, whether that requires making the association with rogue groups or even just individuals (Baghdadi).
What else could explain the adoption of an expert from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy by the GrayZone? That is Max Abrahms, who regularly provides the respectable and unofficial “expert” analysis on “The Terrorists!” to these Assadists. If we turn to the New York Times, Abrahms can be found arguing: “The U.S. Should Help Assad to Fight ISIS, the Greater Evil.” This is also the same framework that was guiding the GrayZone’s current expert to endorse Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield, arguing that state violence “was [a] language terrorists could understand,” especially after Yasser Arafat had rejected Ehud Barak when he “offered the house” to him at Camp David. Thus, Abrahms is on the GrayZone’s “side even if his politics [are] indistinguishable from Netanyahu’s,” to quote Louis Proyect, because of the fact that both parties subscribe to “War on Terror” ideology in a vile manner.
When you morph into a “War on Terror” crusader, you will inevitably congregate with others, even if they are more consistent at the job (Abrahms supported “Killing Gaza,” which Cohen is opposed to, rather than “Killing Idlib,” which Cohen is supportive of). In this sense, Tulsi Gabbard must be defended, for she at least supports the latter, even if she’s more consistent at the job as well, having shown support to such “War on Terror” reactionary states as Sisi’s Egypt, Modi’s India, and Netanyahu’s Israel. No matter: as long as she supports the slaughter of Syrians, it’s fine.
So, is Dan Cohen a toxin within Leftist analysis? Yeah, basically.
