[lbo-talk] Iraq, the left and the 'resistance' (Geras blog)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Feb 10 17:09:44 PST 2004



>>If most Iraqis are scared to death of resistance fighters taking
>>power, they will have to get organized so they can bid for power
>>themselves or at least try to protect themselves, come what may.
>
>Agreed. But that would leave them in bitter opposition to John
>Pilger: "I think the resistance in Iraq is incredibly important for
>all of us. I think that we depend on the resistance to win."
>
>Seth

Perhaps, Pilger has a different understanding of what "winning" means than mine. In my view, resistance fighters themselves cannot win as long as they have no political wing that can command allegiance of sizable sectors of all critical constituencies in Iraq. War is the continuation of politics by other means -- to put it differently, what is primary is political struggle, not armed struggle.

Right now, resistance fighters have no political wing at all, as far as I can see -- most likely, there are many autonomous cells with different political tendencies engaged in armed struggle with no common political program to unite them. If the occupation continues for long and the ranks of resistance fighters grow, however, they may eventually develop a political wing, whose program it is impossible to foresee at this moment. -- Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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