> Please explain this a bit more...
>
> > Their orientation is "left in form, right in essence." Yours too.
> >
> > lp
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
Fine, if you wish.
The first sentence refers to the "Alliance for Workers' Liberty", whose statement was posted by Pugliese in the hope of starting a fight. "Yours too" refers to Chuck Munson, who wrote praising the AWL's stand.
The AWL statement attacks the SWP-UK for using the slogan "Victory to the Resistance". The AWL correctly concludes that this slogan is roughly equivalent to the slogan "Victory to Iraq", and attacks the SWP-UK for taking the position that there is any basis for choosing between Iraq (under the Ba'ath) and the US/uk in this war: "victory for the Iraqi state in this war would be as horrible as US victory."
(Questioned in the dock, a member of the SWP-UK might answer "The very reason that we chose the slogan 'Victory to the Resistance' was to emphasize that we are trying not to give support to the Ba'ath government per se. If the Republican Guard and the Fedayeen are for one reason or another unable to fight off the US, perhaps some other resistance force will be able to do so." But AWL is unwilling to give them any leeway on any slogan that suggests that, if a force organized under the leadership of the Ba'ath is fighting a force organized under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld, anyone should care who defeats who. )
They go on to develop a fantasy that if, somehow, the impoverished and strangled Iraqi state should somehow successfully defend itself against the US, this would make it a "regional imperialist power" which would go on to invade Kuwait! (I notice that they would apparently defend the right to self-determination of the government of the Emir of Kuwait, although they deny this to Iraq under the Ba'ath.)
They then promote the slogan, "No to war, no to Saddam." An intelligent worker who has so far been convinced by the arguments of the 'humanitarian imperialists' might say, 'I don't understand how you intend to get rid of Saddam without war. The whole point of the war is to get rid of Saddam. And after Saddam is overthrown, there will be no war. Therefore we should win the war as quickly as possible." Another intelligent worker might say, "No, what they mean is that the CIA would be sent in to assassinate Saddam without war." Another might say "Well, how about economic sanctions? If we really tighten up the screws, we can get rid of Saddam without war." Another might say, "Well, maybe we should give money to the Iraqi National Congress so they can outfit their own army, and then we should give them weapons." This is the kind of morass you get into when you try to get the British, or US workers, mobilized around the slogan "No to Saddam!"
The AWL argues that "Revolution has often been born from the horrors of war. If the war cracks Saddam's totalitarian state, and a powerful, principled international anti-war movement cracks the US/UK's ability to sustain garrison imperialism in Iraq, then the peoples of Iraq, organising autonomously, may well find a way through to a genuine democratic revolution."
If this argument is taken seriously, it means that the international anti-war movement should be very careful to leave the invasion alone until it has "cracked Saddam's totalitarian state." Then, we should thrown our mighty divisions into the battle to "crack the US/UK's ability to sustain garrison imperialism in Iraq." But we will be absolutely unable to do this without the simultaneous armed resistance of -somebody- in Iraq, At the moment this 'somebody' is the army and militias organized by the Ba'ath government. At some future time it may be someone else. But it is delusional megalomania to act as if we, the 'international anti-war movement', would have the power to bring about the victory of some as-yet nonexistent Iraqi force, having stood aside and abstained from meaningful activity while the army, Republican Guard, and Fedayeen are slaughtered by the thousands.
The argument "After Hitler, us!" was bad when raised in Germany. The argument "After Garner, us!" would be bad if raised in Iraq by ultra-left Iraqis. But the argument "After Garner, them!" raised by the AWL, in England, where "them" refers to some Iraqi movement of the future, amounts to acceptance of the humanitarian-imperialist line that the invasion is a good thing. Both the AWL and Blair want the invasion to "crack Saddam's totalitarian state." AWL hopes that after Iraq is crushed and the US/uk troops are in place, a guerrilla movement acceptable to the AWL will rise up and throw them back out again, with the support of the 'international anti-war movement.' But what actually will happen is that the US will move on to the next country, Syria for example, in which case the AWL will raise the slogan 'No to war! No to Assad!', or Iran, in which case the AWL will raise the slogan 'No to war! No to the Islamic republic!'.
The AWL goes on to take to task those Marxists who do not treat the war between the US/uk and Iraq in a manner analogous to the war between Germany and Russia in 1914-1918. Since nobody with any sense could possibly treat the invasion of Iraq as being remotely similar to a war between to equivalent major imperialist powers, I won't bother to deal with it.
The hallmark of the ultraleftist is unwillingness to deal with the actual struggles taking place, isolating oneself from them and preferring to support a struggle envisioned by oneself. Put another way, it is the refusal to grasp the major or minor contradictions of a situation. In the name of opposition to totalitarianism and support for Kurdish and Shi'i self-determination (left in form), the AWL ends up with a position very similar to the current positions of the governments of France and Germany, "let the US/uk win quickly while we watch, and then we will struggle over the post-war future of Iraq" (right in essence). Meanwhile they are completely unable to view the Ba'ath government as a contradictory phenomenon. It is ALL BAD in their view. They can't perceive, among the negative aspects of that government such as its anti-communism, its lack of democracy, and its representation of the Iraqi bourgeoisie against the workers, the positive aspect of its defense of Iraqi national interests against imperialism.
That explains my characterization of the AWL's position as "left in form, right in essence." Chuck Munson comes along and expresses support for this position, and thinks it is a fine thing "to see somebody calling other leftists on their support for Saddam Hussein." As if this were a new phenomenon. People have been "calling us" on this in the editorial pages of the major capitalist papers throughout the war crisis. (Sample caption: "Give Saddam a chance" doesn't have the same ring as "Give peace a chance.") That, if you will, is "RIGHT in form, right in essence." (It's also damnable hypocrisy, since during the Viet Nam War the slogan "give peace a chance" was excoriated by those same papers as an apology for evil totalitarian communism, etc.)
Munson goes on to declare, "It seems now that the anti-war movement should have been a little louder in our opposition to his regime." I am especially intrigued by the phrase "It seems now." And by the little word "NOW". Why does it seem that way -now-? What new information about the evils of Saddam Hussein's rule has come to light "NOW"? Nothing. What OTHER new information is he referring to? The only possible sense that I can make of this is a completely opportunist sense: "It looks as if Iraq is losing the war; there are US tanks at the Baghdad airport; therefore in retrospect we shouldn't have been backing a losing horse, and should have disassociated ourselves from Iraq early on." If anyone can think of another reasonable explanation for what he is saying which would acquit Chuck from the charge of rank opportunism, please tell me!
I would say just the opposite. No new information has come our way in the last two weeks about how bad Saddam Hussein's rule has been. The new information that has come our way is about the heroism of the Iraqi resistance fighters and the fierce fight against near-impossible odds that has been put up by people whom various leftists were dismissing as "Ba'athist thugs" not so long ago. Iraq has not collapsed. Despite the ability of Abrams tanks to drive around through the streets, nobody knows when it will collapse. So far the invaders do not control much more of the country than those areas of unpopulated desert which can be effectively surveilled from the air, and those roads and acres of land which currently have tanks sitting on them. There is no puppet government. There is no major chunk of occupied populated Iraqi territory which a puppet government could administer. It is impossible to calculate how long it will take the invaders to achieve their war aims, or what obstacles may be raised to delay or prevent their achievement. There may be a period of weeks, or months, or longer, during which "leftists" will be faced with the question, 'WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON.'
Lou Paulsen Chicago