Oz Katerji Profile picture
Sep 22, 2020 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
There are two major problems with presenting Corbyn’s foreign policy as progressive and popular. The first being that his foreign policy demonstrably wasn’t progressive, the second being that his foreign policy demonstrably wasn’t popular.
While Iraqi Yazidis were facing genocide on Mt Sinjar, Corbyn was busy opposing the air campaign that saved their lives. A campaign that was *overwhelmingly* supported by the electorate. No, Corbyn was never “demonised” over this, his supporters don’t even concede he was wrong.
You can disagree with me all you want, but the strength of the polling at the time, even to extend air strikes into Syria, is irrefutable. He got it wrong both morally and politically. You can't learn lessons in politics if you refuse to analyse the evidence in front of you.
Skripal and ISIS are major examples of where Corbyn got it wrong and the public noticed. Corbyn also denied mass graves in Kosovo and invited a member of the Assad regime to parliament to deny chemical weapons attacks. These are times he got it wrong & the public didn't notice.
The reality is that, outside of Hamas/Hezbollah/IRA, and some occasional lines about Venezuela, the mainstream press never bothered to really scrutinise Corbyn's foreign policy history. Far from demonisation, he got off lightly, which is an astonishing thing to say in context.
Here is Corbyn sitting down with the Assad regime's Mother Agnes, who was in London to deny her regime's responsibility for chemical weapons attacks. I never saw this asked about on Newsnight or on the front page of the Telegraph. It should have been. He got off lightly.
The incident above was important enough for Owen Jones to pull out of a Stop The War Coalition event in protest at her inclusion, yet was never important enough for a single question to be asked about it to either of them during his tenure as leader.
Honestly I spend too much of my time worrying about what the foreign policy platform of the country's main opposition party is, but I really have spent years dedicated to this topic, because I passionately believe in a progressive & human rights focused FP thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2…

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More from @OzKaterji

Mar 26
In the last decade the dictatorship governing the United Arab Emirates has poured billions of dollars into backing the Assad regime in Syria, the warlord Khalifa Haftar in Libya and the genocidal RSF militia in Sudan, only to watch all 3 lose their civil wars in slow motion.
Besides Iran, there is no regime in the Middle East more dedicated to destabilising the region and financing the industrial scale slaughter of civilians, Iran however does not enjoy the luxury of alliances and lucrative business partnerships with western liberal democracies.
If you want to start seeing the stabilisation of the Middle East, step one is imposing economic costs on the blood soaked monarchy in the Gulf incentivising destabilisation, tyranny and conflict.

Sanction the UAE.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 8
Rampant disorder was inevitable, given that these institutions were irredeemably corrupt and responsible for propping up the former regime.

In either case though, the interim government should have been better prepared for that disorder.
Sharaa’s failure to bring groups like the SNA to heel though is coming back to haunt him. Of course that’s easier said than done with domestic situation & relationship with Turkey to consider, but what we’re witnessing on the coast is unconscionable & fundamentally unacceptable.
Outsiders are of course going to ignore the violence perpetrated by former regime elements & hold the government entirely to blame, but that is to be expected, and in fairness, the new Syrian authorities are the only ones the responsibility for security ultimately falls on.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 19
European leaders need to stop saying to themselves that it can’t get any worse than this, it can and it will, and a European defence strategy against Russian invasion is critical.

Defence spending needs to be significantly ramped up and Europe must re-arm to prepare for the threat.

To not do so now is not folly, it’s sheer madness.

War is coming, whether we want it or not. The only way to prevent it is victory in Ukraine, and if European leaders aren’t prepared to stomach the costs for that without Washington, then it will be their own children who will be fighting Russian troops in the near future.
The same people who told you Russia would never invade Ukraine are now telling you Russia would never invade the Baltic States.

They were wrong in 2022, and they’re wrong again today.
I don’t want to be tweeting this from Vilnius in 3 years time.

Europe is not going to get any clearer warning signs than this.

To prevent catastrophe, we must all prepare for war.
Read 5 tweets
Dec 9, 2024
I love this as an insult.

Yes, I love regime change.

I want all dictatorships to be replaced with democracies.

As a liberal democrat, by definition, I oppose all regimes.

I support revolutions to overthrow regimes.

Put “regime change fanatic” on my tombstone, that’s fine. Image
I am a regime change fanatic & you @aaronjmate are an accomplice to Assad’s war crimes, who advocated for him at the UN, at the invitation of the Russian government, and you and your colleagues, for pay, were the propaganda wing of a regime engaged in industrial human slaughter.
@aaronjmate Both of us are still relatively young, but I need you to understand this, I promise you, I will spend the rest of my life making sure none of you ever truly know of a moment of peace.

And when I am in Syria, I will be searching through Mukhabarat documents for your names.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 8, 2024
Remembering today Sam Heller and Aron Lund, who both lobbied the US government to force Turkey to hand over Idlib to Assad.

Remembering that they continued to push this policy even as Assad slaughtered those who remained in “reconciled” areas.

They share in Assad’s defeat.
Remembering Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek, as they took selfies outside of concentration camps and danced on the graves of our martyrs.

Remembering Peter Oborne and Peter Hitchens, who denied Assad gassed children.
Remembering all of them, I will spend the rest of my life never allowing them to forget which side of history they stood on.

Remembering that the evil they stood for was dismantled brick by brick by the Syrians they wanted slaughtered in the name of maintaining the regime.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 5, 2024
This is an understandable position from a CVE perspective, but here’s the thing, the US doesn’t get to have a say in this anymore.

Particularly when the prevailing school of foreign policy thought has been against supporting anti-Assad forces.
What is happening in Syria today is happening in spite of those foreign policy decisions, and in spite of those who presented Assad’s victory as the only possible resolution to the Syrian civil war.

Now the conflict is no longer in the hands of the western powers.
The US & Russia effectively came to an agreement that Assad should stay in 2015, and 9 years later, the consequences of that monstrous, despicable decision are rippling out across Syria.

These people always fundamentally misunderstood why Syrians tried to topple the regime.
Read 7 tweets

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