[lbo-talk] Red Flag Over Bagdad

[Brad Mayer]

I called it the "Hitchens' Party".  It's really quite hilarious:  Even 
US newspapers feature fron cover photos plastered with red flags waving 
for the capture of Saddam.  What would have Orwell thought?  Never mind 
what the Hitch thinks - he's certainly found his intellectual meaure in 
the support of the Iraqi CP for the American occupation.

I believe that this is the old pro-Moscow Comintern Iraqi CP.  The CIA 
supported Saddam in his early years in the Sixties as a "staunch 
anticommunist", and he repaid the favor by hanging many of their 
members.  Which is of course why  they are so happy now.

For this kind of old line Comintern trained organization, this is all 
"theoretically" justified in terms of a "Popular Front" (with the CPA), 
in a "democratic revolution against fascism", and so on in an utterly 
vulgarized form of "marxism".  It's a purile logic at the same low level 
as the "postwar reconstruction" fantasies of the neocons.  Oh yes, once 
again we're in a common front  with Uncle Joe in the peoples' war 
against fascism.  Pure HitchThought:  Funny, though, isn't it, that 
Hitch now finds himself in league with the lineal descendents of Joseph 
Stalin, the ideological blood brothers of the very North Korean regime 
Hitch also inveighs against.

There are different communist parties in Iraq:

This is the ICP:
http://www.iraqcp.org/framse1/index.htm

This is the worker-communist party:
http://www.wpiraq.org/english/

LOL, is all I can say.  Enjoy the circus.

-Brad