Paul wrote:
>
> [I know this is a tangent but...]
>
> Even in the highly ideological world of the history of WWII in Eastern
> Europe, I don't think you will find much support for your overall point
> that there were large scale defections by 'actual' *Soviet* people, Stalin
> not withstanding. At most, a few Ukrainian-nationalist historians claim
> that *Soviet* ethnic Ukrainians would have defected had Hitler not treated
> the Ukrainian nationalist movement (Stephan Bandera et. al) in such a
> racist manner.
And in any case, the point of the original post did not need material from the east. The French Resistance killed about 4 French citizens for every German it killed. And they had the kind of outside support and ideological coherence that the Iraqi resistance does not have. And in any case, the good or bad of the Iraqi resistance is utterly irrelevant to the obligation of leftists in the u.s. to oppose all u.s. imperialist adventures abroad.
This question ought not to be among the two or three thousand legitimate matters of dispute among the U.S. left. A leftist in the u.s. is someone who unreservedly opposes u.s. military action. Our position needs to be identical to the position of German leftists in the 1930s and 1940s in reference to any and all German military actions.
Carrol