Rather than bombing the Assad regime, Gourevitch says, let the Syrian refugees into the United States. What’s being advocated here is clear: no to empire, yes to refugees. Needless to say, I too subscribe to that notion and am against US imperial intervention.

But I fear that these two positions are just not enough. On their own, they constitute an impoverished politics.

In order to explain why, let’s briefly apply the same principles to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When Israel brutally kills Palestinians, as it regularly does, do progressives in America only say “let those Palestinian refugees who manage to escape come to the US”? Absolutely not. Because they know that this would just aid Israel’s colonial designs and invite Israel to continue behaving with impunity in the region.

Progressives stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, call for an end to Israel’s bombings, and demand that Israel be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. They also push their own imperial state to stop all military aid for Israel, stop feeding Israel’s colonial appetite, and stop shielding it from international justice.

Why is the Syrian case so different? The reality is that the Syrian catastrophe is even more acute. With half a million dead and millions displaced, the scale of the Syrian carnage is vast. Assad’s dictatorship would rather kill, besiege, and starve the population than allow them dignity and democracy. Either live in humiliation and servitude, leave, or die. No people should have to accept these miserable options

Why being against Assad matters too