When a force appears in Iraq that a) clearly is a force
Tahir: What is a force, a movement that is ready to take state power? If so then I think this is an inherently conservative position.
and b) clearly is politically preferable to other forces,
Tahir: I think the Worker Communist Party is preferable to any others that I know of, if only because they are aligned with the WCP of Iran and therefore show a great measure of (a) internationalism and (b) anti-clericalism (I do think there are a few more reasons, but people can go and read their stuff for those). I think that a very rebellious situation is unfolding in this part of the world, of which the WCPs are probably the most coherent organising 'force'. This is potentially a very significant development indeed - the Islamic Republic is looking shakier all the time. Who would not welcome this? Well perhaps those obscurantists that we've seen who claim that Islamic fundamentalists are 'objectively anti-imperialist' and therefore somehow progressive. A clerical fascist victory in Iraq would be devastating for the Middle East and the world. We need to support those progressive forces that can bring down the Islamic Republic and prevent the same from emerging in Iraq. Otherwise leftists will be slaughtered there, make no mistake about that.
A colleague in the English Department had given a hemming and hawing speech in which he had pulled out the old chestnut about the "Viet Cong" being just a peasant movement and somehow not "real" communists.
Tahir: He was right, but whether that was good enough reason for not supporting them is a different issue.
I mentioned that Ho had been a prime agent of the Third International, that he was indeed a "real" communist,
Tahir: The comintern was not necesarily the great credential that you are presenting it to be. It consisted of all of those forces that were prepared to fall in behind Stalin, liquidate anyone suspected of 'trotskyism', 'anarchism', etc. and actively work to prevent revolution in many parts of the world, e.g. Spain. All that membership of the comintern meant was being prepared to be part of a global counter-revolution (which had already been accomplished in Russia), a topic which you consistently refuse ever to address. Stop hiding behind banal formulations such as membership of this or that and say something fucking substantive for a change.
and that I supported the Vietnamese for that reason, adding that I too was a real communist and had two ears, two eyes, etc. just like any other human being.
!!!!
What 'we' (the U.S. state) should do is strictly a problem in logistics: how does one go about moving the men and women now cluttering the landscape in Iraq back to the states.
Tahir: Fuck you, I'm not a US citizen and furthermore don't identify with any of the governments that you are talking about. Is this an international list or what?
But for now there is no force in Iraq that so qualifies as the NLF and the DRV did.
Tahir: Thank god. There are forces, some of which have happily moved on from all that decrepit 3rd Int. thinking.
So we must simply insist on the necessity of the Iraqis working out their own fates without interference from The Evil Empire.
Tahir: We are not representatives of any Empire on this list - either it is a genuinely leftist list, thoroughly internationalist in other words, or it is a crock of shit. Which is it?