Message: 3
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:12:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Kkennieth Heard <kkennieth at yahoo.com> Subject: The Iraq and the Position of the Working Class Here
Dearest Comrade Feldman
There is certainly a problem in this regard
of the occupation, but the position this writer attains is that there should be intervention
by the United Nations in this situation, and
with a force of Peace Keepers as well. Such
position is maintained and has been discussed with personnel here in Philadelphia for sometime,
and as the ultra-left here has the attitude not to
support such a position, there has been a constant
split in the movement to remove the United States
military form the area of the United States Governmental Protorate of Iraq.
Without the UN, there will be no withdrawal of such imperial forces as are there at this point. and as an American and an African American at that, there is
no other realistic, dialectically responsible position
one may take in this regard.
Having just returned from a meeting of well informed people who have agreed in a day long meeting to
subscribe to the position of the UN intervening in the Iraqi situation, must move to request the maturing of
other said positions which are not of this style nor content.
To do so may take a bit of time, but we have all confidence,
the more mature position will assist you and others in your work.
Also, there was recently a communication from one of the people posting to
the UfPJ board. We must caution, there are a number
false organizations which are posing as one organization or another
having a so-called-more-revolutionary position than the other.
Such repositions of false organizations masquerading as another should be investigated and ceased as soon as possible, and in the manner of the UfPJ standard call for correct thinking and analysis in such cases.
Specific to this was the so-called posting from the so called (Cadre) group
in Iraq, if they were at all within the country at all.
In Love and Struggle
Ken Heard
Onward to Socialism!
Fred Feldman <ffeldman at bellatlantic.net> wrote: AlWith the possible exception of the unions, which I know little about, all sections of the Iraqi population who are resisting the occupation have bourgeois leaderships. That includes the Shiites and Sunni-based armed resistance. That means they all pursue particular bourgeois class interests through the struggle. In most semicolonial countries this was true in the original fight for independence itself. Only in a minority of the cases was there major revolutionary-nationalist or working-class leaderships.
Maneuvering with the occupation and attempts to demobilize the masses are built into this situation. We have to not romanticize the situation. But we also should not demand that the situation be romantic before we will recognize the reality of the struggle and the fact that some gains have been made. At present -- there may be an attempt to reverse this after the US elections -- there is an overall tendency of the imperialist occupation to weaken and retreat in the face of the very broad overall resistance of the peoples of Iraq.
We are not going to learn how a Chavez or Castro or Ben Bella-type leadership would function in this situation, because there is none there to teach us at present. It is important to assess the situation realistically, but it is even more important to reject every trace of sectarianism toward the real process by which the Iraqi masses, in this extremely difficult situation of occupation by the world's one imperialist giant, are pursuing the fight to assert and win their independence.
Unconditional opposition to the US war and occupation, and to UN intervention to prop it up, should not become an excuse for refusal to support the complex and difficult struggle that the peoples of Iraq are actually carrying out. Fred Feldman
-- Michael Pugliese
>From "Marx at the Millenium, " by Cyril Smith, Pluto Press. Footnote 5, pg.
178, "...The Three Priciples of Democratic Centralism...by Don Cuckson: 1
Father Knows Best 2 Not in front of the children 3 Keep it in the family.