Comrade Bassam on the left and Syria

"Finally, I tried to argue this point on principle. But it is also important to note the attempts of the Saudi-US alliance, strongly supported by Israel and Qatar, to beat down not only Hizballah, but the notion of resistance to the same imperial and hegemonic policies that have prevailed in the region and devastated its peoples for decades. To be sure, Syria's authoritarianism was not supported by the western portion of this alliance, but it was surely supported heavily, if intermittently, by Arab Gulf oil money since the 1970s. Ultimately, the question is less about the source of funding and much more about what is being done with most of the funding. The majority of the funding and allocation of resources in Syria has been spent on policing its own society or looting it, whereas clearly much of the funding the Hizballah received from Iran or elsewhere--despite less disciplined allocation as a function of its changing class base--has been spent on its fighting force and weapons that are predominantly used in fighting Israel. Many, however, are trying to drag Hizballah in full force into the Lebanese quagmire so as to change the above formula."