Message: 5 Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 19:24:02 -0800 From: Michael Pugliese <michael098762001 at earthlink.net> Subject: [lbo-talk] Iraq, the left and the 'resistance' (Geras blog)
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2004/02/iraq_the_left_a.html February 08, 2004 Iraq, the left and the 'resistance'
David McKnight, writing in the Australian, picks out some differences between the Iraqi left and some sections of the Western left:
Tahir: Some odd points in this crappy journalistic piece that need a response (below)
Do the bloody actions of the so-called resistance constitute a war of national liberation, making them worthy of left-wing support?
Tahir: I question the assumption that "wars of national liberation" are necessarily worthy of support, unless there is at least some identifiable progressive content, e.g. anti-capitalism, anti-racism, etc. This is not always evident, and is highly doubtful in the case of both the Saddamist and Islamist forms of resistance. Of course this is leaving aside for a moment the feeling of schadenfreude that some of us get from each American casualty - after all there must be something to persuade young Americans that the US military is a bad career option.
Are Saddam Hussein's thugs comparable to the Timorese fighting Indonesian occupation? Or to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress? Or to the French Resistance against Nazi Germany?
Tahir: For reasons gioven above, I say no I don't think so. ..... In a radio broadcast on December 31 last year, [John] Pilger told American listeners: "I think the resistance in Iraq is incredibly important for all of us. I think that we depend on the resistance to win so that other countries might not be attacked, so that our world, in a sense, becomes more secure. Now, I don't like resistances that produce the kind of terrible civilian atrocities that this one has, but that is true of all of the resistances." .....
Tahir: Not true and a very dangerous thing to say. It is a short step from there to saying oh well all resistance leads to violence against civilians and therefore all forms of resistance are just as great an evil as the evil they are against.
.......
Another communist group in Iraq is the Iran-leaning Worker-Communist Party of Iraq ...
Tahir: Very misleading. The Worker-Communist Party of Iraq is very closely aligned with the Worker-Commuhist Party of Iran - they are virtually the same organisation - but both are implacably opposed to the Islamic Republic.
..... Naturally, the WCP also calls for the US to get out. But in a bitter irony that is characteristic of the new period in which we live, the Cold War enemies now have a common enemy Ã*¢ââ€*Â*ââ**Å" the remnants of the Saddam regime and the ultra-reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who have come to Iraq to kill Americans, religious enemies and communists.
Tahir: This is only a bitter irony for all those Maoists and other political opportunists who think that "my enemy's enemy is my friend". There is nothing in logic or in any genuinely revolutionary theory that can support such a proposition. Various imperialists and capitalists do fight against one another on occasion (classically, democrats against fascists), but that does not mean that one of their camps must become "our" camp.