(1) Number 1 might be the resounding and sophisticated – if less than enlightening - response on the 14th Feb, as follows:
>“let's just say Iraqi guerillas did more today to get America out of Iraq and not be able to impose a puppet gov't than Mike Larkin did today. steve" “Fuck you.”
-At this point I will not suggest whether the ordering of the scale is such that number 1 is at the top or the bottom of eloquence. Let us move on.
(2) Definitive comments on “Bravery” are self-evidently quite appropriate for the American left, no doubt. Thus we have the opinion that “real guts” Macho strength is more than these paltry displays of mere Iraqi type resistance: mike larkin wrote Ø Wow, it takes real guts to mow down a bunch of desperately poor Iraqi police >and then turn hardened criminals loose on the population! Hopefully, we'll
> withdraw soon so the great work of liberation can
My reply: Forgive me, I must be really dumb. Does this mean that any form of collaborator with the American imperialist must be protected as he/she is “desperately poor”? Who is then the enemy – ever? Is all form of resistances invalid because you cannot line up the “true enemy” – say Ms Rice - in the sights? Would in fact, that even be better? The problem with individual terrorism, as VIL taught the Narodniki, was that the ruling class will simple find another Ms Rice –[Why is it that we always select Bush for the target?]; & that it will use it as a pretext. When Engels defended the terrorist actions of Vera Zasulich, he admitted that was bending the rules of “sensible tactics” –[my words not his]. What was this Macho commentators’ views of the attacks of the Viet Minh in Saigon bars as the Good time girls were giving some R&R to the marines – they were just after all ‘desperately poor’ people. When is the passage of a resistance into a civil war, to be clear? When is the recognition of a comprador force within a colonized state to be acknowledged. Oh - & what do you do with a comprador force? Indeed, that leads to another question – what do you do with the “desperately poor” workers that are driven into the military and the police force of any country? Are they “the enemy”? Is it wrong to try to “win them over”? Are these debates – REALLY – totally forgotten by the Brave American Left?
(3) Shall we ascend the ladder of eloquence? And we arrive at speculations that Imperialism is a good thing as it brought us freedom from Mr Hussein & “particularism, clerical obscurantism and/or Arab ethnocentrism” Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 12:49:33 -0500 Grant Lee wrote: >I prefer to simply support the Iraqi communists, on the basis that I think
>their approach seems most likely IMO to deliver genuine revolutionary change
>to Iraq . But if we _do_ look at Iraq "in particular" --- and US-led
>imperialism in Iraq "in particular" --- an unpalatable thought might then
>surface: "is imperialism is all bad?", when it brings new/enhanced
>connections with the outside world and investment, and the alternatives
>might well be particularism, clerical obscurantism and/or Arab
>ethnocentrism..._if_ you want to go down that line of thought.
Again, I must be exceedingly dense. Imperialism in the Middle East – in “particular” Iraq - have moved from the fostering of Mr Hussein’s barbarism, and the slaughter of Iraqi communists mis-led by the revisionist Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) [Many have written on this, but for an example, see http://harikumar.brinkster.net/PAPER/JUNEJULY2003/GUERILLA%20WAR%20IRAQ.htm], to the physical occupation of Iraqi oil reserves by Imperial might. & we good Marxists, as we are must recognize that life is “dialectical” and “exceedingly complicated” & as Buddhists that the Charkra goes round & we, must …. THANK imperialism for its’ beneficence & generosity?
4) And now we reach a higher rung, we hear that we should believe the NYT strings of black-on-white truths: “14 Feb 2004 Stephen E Philion: Subject: [lbo-talk] Iraqi communists on "resistance"
>--are they not receiving enough popular support to sustain a pretty
>impressive anti-occupation force w/o being turned in to the occupation
>authority? Dunno about that - the capitalist hyena press, or at least the NYT branch of that beast, reports that the occupation forces have been fairly successful at arresting leaders of the resistance. And it's not likely that they could have captured Saddam himself without some help from the locals. Doug
Well faced with the truths of the NYT – we are almost forced to retreat down a rung or two.... But no- let us press on. For at another high rung is this:
5) It is the rung of ‘Go with the flow’; or as the good renunicationists would say (Notice it seems one cannot call this rung that of the Buddha – or so we are told) "All is Futile – thus – What is to Be Done? Nowt - Let Us Now Fold our Tents." Staring into space - Let us Practice our Ohmmmmmmm! "Grant Lee" to Ulhas:
> Even if imperialism is all bad, who in Asia is fighting against it?
> Anti-Imperialism as a _mass_political movement in the 20th century sense of
> the term is almost dead. Let Iraqis decide how to deal with the US occupation.
> Ulhas I agree with Ulhas here. Even in Iraq the resistance appears to be very small in numbers and largely trading on the well-known (and highly admirable) sensitivity of the US public to casualties in foreign wars. “
But to what advertising agency does a Resistance movement go to proclaim his or her wares? That we appear to know so little about the Iraqi movement is hardly a surprise. Well to me at any rate, since I do not share the sources of the CIA & other Eyes. However, is there not a ring of the same sentiments being made about – well, yes that old hoary example, The Vietnamese resistance? What ddi the world (even the Left world) really know about the movement till after Dien Bien Phu - & then how long did it take to forget that?
And Grant, postulating that Gramsci [I prefer not to trouble ourselves with that servant of revisionism Togliatti in this context] would not have been troubled with a British invasion to un-seat Mussolinni seems quite strange to me. (i) Rather than your depiction that G would have trouble BEFORE but not after, I think is quite wrong. Likely if anything the other way around. (ii) Would Gramsci support a colonization policy? Or do you think he would have said, “It is really not for me to say – What will be will be”?
But then Grant, you must have the last word: For your speculations inevitably raise the ‘particular’ spectre haunting this debate both for Ms Rice & the Left - Vietnam: “I guess some western sympathisers with the Iraqi resistance are hoping for a mounting backlash in the US. But I'm not encouraged by the historical precedents on that score, e.g. in spite of the 50,000 US dead, Vietnam appears to have had few long-term political effects.” Hari Kumar – Wondering if this message will get thru’ the filter of size – as did Mr Lacny’s.