The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising | Sam Dathi
▻http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/book-reviews/17129-the-people-want-a-radical-exploration-of-the-arab-uprising
But sadly, it is this reasoning that has, at least in part, led to Achcar getting himself into the terrible muddle of arguing (not in this book, but elsewhere) in favour of foreign intervention. Essentially, he argues that the Syrian people need US arms in order to take on the praetorian guard. Similarly, in 2011, he argued in favour of a no-fly zone in Libya to help resist Gaddafi’s assault on Benghazi and subsequently he supported NATO arming the Libyan insurgency. You might say he saw these interventions as the lesser of two evils when it comes to defeating patrimonial regimes.
It is clear that Achcar’s reasons here are wholly sincere: he is not doing a Christopher Hitchens. Nevertheless, his conclusions are entirely wrong: in supporting, or rather not opposing, these imperial interventions, he dangerously underplays their destructiveness and how corrosive they are to the integrity of any liberation movement. Invariably, such intervention is never the lesser of two evils. To his credit, Achcar explicitly recognises that Western interventions are bloody and do not come without strings; his error is in not giving these facts anywhere near their due weight. Further, his premise that there would have always been civil wars in patrimonial Libya and Syria, to a large degree lets Western imperialism off the hook for precipitating a great deal of that violence.
For lack of space, I will not rehash all the familiar arguments as to why NATO intervention has made things immeasurably worse in Libya and why arming the rebels in Syria would be disastrous for the people. All I will say is that, in the case of Syria, as much as I recognise how hard it will be for the people to overthrow Assad, not least given the patrimonial nature of the regime, their task will be made infinitely worse by the cruel and cynical interference of foreign powers.