> Indeed! Also bizarre that many of the same people who
> say that _this_ time we should ally with the Democrats,
> slimeballs though they be, _also_ argue that we must not
> ally with any Iraq forces except those of exceptional
> political purity
Carrol is still having difficulty grasping the fact that most of the people on lbo-talk are in the US, not in Iraq. His decision to place himself well above the petty political concerns of people in his own country conditions his outlook on international solidarity as well.
Further, the literature professor might want to parse my own earlier posts for evidence that I ever conditioned my own support for certain political forces in Iraq on the question of "political purity." He won't find any. I have no illusions that the Iraqi Communist Party, the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, et. al., and all the mass organizations they lead are all spotless. One condition I HAVE placed on any support for these forces is that they should have support from the Iraqi people or at least be attempting to organize them around their broad interests. I have confidence that the union organizers and the organizers of the unemployed are doing this. I do not have confidence that all of the armed guerrillas do this -- though I do not have enough information to say for sure. It is quite clear, however, that the majority outside the Sunni areas do not support armed struggle at this time, and indeed many of the armed groups are subject to denunciations by the Shi'ite and leftist leaders.
Some others have made an interesting argument here, to the effect that the Shi'ite masses who are demanding elections are able to get attention only because of the armed struggle, and that Sistani gets to play the role of Martin Luther King, the "moderate" alternative, in this context. That seems elegant enough, but I'm not sure it's true. In that game, you have to assume that the people pursuing the armed path and the people pursuing the "peaceful" one are still broadly on the same side and only differ on tactics; I see little evidence of this in Iraq. The armed groups are strongest in the Sunni areas, and on-the-ground reports (cf. Christian Parenti) record the wariness there about the possibility of a Shi'ite state. The goal of Sistani and his Shi'ite followers is to push for direct elections as soon as possible, which they know would lead inevitably to a Shi'ite-majority government. The goal of many of the Sunnis would be to postpone those elections. Both sides want the US out, but for different reasons. (And the Kurds are another matter entirely.) Of course there are all kinds of political cross-currents and contradictions within these ethnic groups as well. But it's doubtful that they want the same things. And even if it were true, what evidence is there that the US would see a majority-rule state, dominated by Shi'ites, as preferable to a Sunni state, simply because the Sunni areas have shown the greatest propensity for armed unrest so far? Indeed, the preponderance of historical evidence points in the other direction.
The various pieces of the "resistance," armed and unarmed, foco and mass, require that we put scare-quotes around the word "resistance" not merely out of some political judgment, but because the evidence so far would indicate that they not only do not constitute a coherent political force, but appear to be at eachother's throats. The argument that they all contribute to the occupation's fall is a tempting one, but it reminds me of nothing so much as George Dangerfield's classic, "The Strange Death of Liberal England," which saw women's suffragists, pro-House of Lords Tories, Irish nationalists, Orange loyalists, and trade union militancy all in a sort of inadvertent conspiracy that led to the demise of the party of Lloyd George. Intriguing, I always thought, but just not quite right.
- - - - - John Lacny
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!