[lbo-talk] "Victory to the Resistance" Re: "Revolutionary Defeatism."

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 11:59 PM -0600 4/5/03, LouPaulsen wrote:
>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. )

The AWL (of whose existence I've been unaware until now) must be 
staffed by dim bulbs.  It is highly unlikely that the Iraqi state as 
it is currently constituted will survive long, unless maybe the 
Russians change their minds and begin to give it military, not just 
diplomatic, support to it (more than rumors of Russian companies' 
sale of military hardware to Iraq have indicated so far).  Iraqis 
will sooner or later have to reconstitute the structure of the 
resistance and build it up during (A) the current invasion and later 
under (B) the colonial occupation.  Moreover, (A) may gradually 
metamorphose into (B), without a clear moment of decisive US conquest 
of the entire Iraqi territory.  Therefore, "Victory to the 
Resistance" is a good and flexible slogan -- it makes sense now, and 
it will make sense later, as long as Iraqis continue to fight back.
-- 
Yoshie

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