[lbo-talk] more on Fallujah

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at rogers.com
Mon Nov 22 16:03:48 PST 2004


Doug Henwood wrote:


> Michael Dawson wrote:
>
> >What are you even thinking of? What "insurgency" has ever existed that
> >"needed to be defeated" via war? Let's hear your list.
>
> Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan!, to quote one of Workers Vanguard's
> classic headlines. The USSR conducted the war brutally, but they were
> more right than the side the US was supporting.
>
> Doug
--------------------------------- Couldn't you also argue on this basis that the Soviets were justified to suppress the risings in E Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, and Czechoslovakia 1968, as Soviet supporters did? These episodes foreshadowed the collapse of the East European state-owned economies in 1989 - including in the Soviet Union itself. All subsequently embarked on a reform process which finally led them back to capitalism. Did this warrant their suppression? Not in my view. They were all popular nationalist uprisings, encompassing a broad range of both socialist and anti-socialist opinion, with the political balance between the opposing factions varying in each situation. The opposition in Afghanistan was certainly the most reactionary. Even so, I don't think the USSR was right to intervene in 1979 in support of the left-leaning government there. The Afghan left took power with much too narrow a base in a very traditional society and, while its modernizing impulse was admirable, it could only hope to push through the desired changes through widespread repression and outside military intervention. The Soviets would have done much better to have dissuaded the leftist coup against the monarchy, but it its national security interests probably influenced it to go along in what became a political catastrophe.

MG



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