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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">Yeah, Achcar stinks to high heaven. All the Imperialist Warmongers came out of their “Leftist” and “Socialist” closets when it came to Libya and Syria.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">Fab<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">Francis A. Boyle<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">Law Building<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">Champaign, IL 61820 USA<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">217-333-7954 (phone)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">217-244-1478 (fax)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><u><span style="font-family:"Arial Black",sans-serif;color:black">(personal comments only)<o:p></o:p></span></u></i></b></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces@lists.chambana.net]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Karen Aram via Peace-discuss<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, February 21, 2018 1:47 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Peace-discuss] Achcar covering up his support for Middle East wars<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">Reading anything this guy has to say is rather like reading what any other supporter for war has to say, especially after his cover has been blown. <o:p></o:p></p>
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<span style="font-size:31.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333;font-weight:normal">Gilbert Achcar seeks to cover up his support for Middle East wars<o:p></o:p></span></h2>
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<i><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#666666;font-weight:normal">By Alex Lantier <br>
13 August 2013<o:p></o:p></span></i></h5>
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<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">In an attempt to salvage what little remains of his “socialist” credentials, Professor Gilbert Achcar, a longtime associate of France’s New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), has written
an essay entitled “Inventive Illiteracy Amidst Petty Sectarianism.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Working at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and within the NPA-linked Socialist Resistance group in Britain, Achcar has been a leading propagandist for the wars in Syria
and in Libya, which he claimed were waged in defense of human rights. Despite the fact that pro-war propaganda has enveloped his political persona with an ineradicable stench, Achcar now protests that his positions on the Middle East wars have been grievously
misrepresented. Thus, he attacks an article by Sarah McDonald in the <em><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Weekly Worker</span></em>, the publication of the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), which called Achcar a “social-imperialist.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">In dismissing McDonald’s epithet, Achcar vents his outrage against the “countless politically illiterate people” who “have accused [me of] of ‘supporting’ NATO’s intervention in Libya.”
He pompously adds, “I will not waste my time and that of the readers in reminding them here of what I really stood for.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Though Mr. Achcar does not care to review the record of his political support for the neo-colonial enterprises in Libya and Syria, he cannot be allowed to rewrite his own history. The
record is clear: Achcar publicly supported imperialist wars and discussed their prosecution with US and French intelligence assets. He bears political responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">From the outset of the Libyan operation, Achcar played a key role in promoting the propaganda required by imperialism to build a pro-war constituency within the milieu of the “leftish”
affluent middle class. In March 2011, two days after the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorizing war in Libya, Achcar published an interview praising the war as a humanitarian operation to keep Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime from attacking
opposition groups in Benghazi.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">While noting that “there are not enough safeguards in the wording of the resolution to bar its use for imperialist purposes,” Achcar said: “But given the urgency of preventing the massacre
that would inevitably have resulted from an assault on Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces, and the absence of any alternative means of achieving the protection goal, no one can reasonably oppose it… You can’t in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an
action that will prevent the massacre of civilians.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">He acknowledged the right-wing politics of the NATO-backed opposition, but hailed the war as similar to revolutionary working class struggles that had toppled Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak the month before. He called NATO’s Libyan allies “a mixture of human rights activists, democracy advocates, intellectuals, tribal elements, and Islamist forces—a very broad coalition … The bottom line is that there is no reason for any different attitude
toward them than to any other of the mass uprisings in the region.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Two years later, it is clear that the war Achcar embraced was an act of imperialist plunder. The NATO powers seized Libya’s oil revenues and oil fields, carpet-bombed cities, including
Tripoli and Sirte, and killed and wounded tens of thousands of people. It brought to power a NATO stooge regime based on a patchwork of Islamist militias that were NATO’s main proxy force to topple and murder Gaddafi.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Achcar repeatedly demanded that NATO funnel more weapons to Libyan opposition militias. Thus, in a largely sympathetic comment on Obama’s April 2011 speech on the war, he said the best
way to “enable the uprising to win, in conformity with the Libyan people’s right to self-determination, is for the hypocritical Western governments—who have sold a lot of weapons to Gaddafi since the arms embargo was lifted in October 2004, and Gaddafi turned
into a model—to deliver arms to the insurgency.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Finally, as Libyan government forces began to collapse under NATO air strikes in August 2011, Achcar criticized NATO for not striking Libya harder. He issued a statement citing right-wing <em><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Wall
Street Journal</span></em> columnist Max Boot’s observation that NATO warplanes had flown 11,107 sorties against Libya, but 38,004 sorties in the 1999 war against Serbia over Kosovo.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">He wrote, “The crucial question then is: why is NATO conducting an aerial campaign in Libya that is low-key not only in comparison with the air component of the war to grab similarly
oil-rich Iraq, but even compared to the air war for economically unimportant Kosovo? And why is the alliance at the same time refraining from providing the insurgents with the weaponry they have consistently and insistently requested?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Achcar’s support for the war epitomized the unrestrained movement of a layer of pseudo-left middle class intellectuals into the camp of imperialism. He functioned not only as a media
publicist for war, but also as a strategist, hobnobbing with various US and French intelligence personnel and collaborators to discuss how best to present the wars to minimize popular opposition to them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">In his latest piece, Achcar seeks to distort the facts surrounding his October 2011 meeting in Sweden with Burhan Ghalioun, the president of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC).
During this meeting, he advised Ghalioun not to call for a NATO invasion of Syria—which would risk provoking mass popular opposition—but for “indirect” intervention to arm opposition forces.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">In the event, this is the policy NATO ultimately pursued, arming the SNC and other Islamist opposition forces, including some tied to Al Qaeda. It led to a devastating proxy war in
Syria that, in two years, has claimed over 100,000 lives and forced millions to flee their homes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">In his current article, Achcar denounces as a “canard” claims that “I took part in a meeting of the Syrian National Council (whereas it was actually a meeting of the left-wing National
Coordination Council) in order to urge them to call for an imperialist intervention in Syria (whereas my contribution to the meeting was dedicated to exactly the opposite).”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Achcar’s denial is simply rubbish. He himself publicly announced that he had met with Ghalioun and described his advice to the SNC in an article published in November 2011 in the Lebanese
daily <em><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Al Akhbar</span></em>. The NPA reposted the article, including on its English language web site, <em><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">International Viewpoint</span></em> .<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:16.3pt;background:white;font-variant-ligatures: normal;orphans: 2;widows: 2">
<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">In this article, he wrote: “I was able to attend the meeting of the Syrian opposition that was held on October 8-9 in Sweden, near the capital, Stockholm. A number of male and female
activists operating in Syria and abroad joined with prominent figures from the Syrian Coordination Committee (SNC—who had come from Syria for the event) in the presence of the most prominent member of the Syrian National Council—its president, Burhan Ghalioun.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:17.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">Professor Achcar can lie to his heart’s content, but the objective record of his reactionary political role has left smudges all over the internet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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