On Nov 27, 2006, at 4:50 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Doug makes it sound like no one in Iraq has a political program, but
> that is not the case. Sadr does. The Mahdi Army is said to model
> itself on Hizballah, combining mass actions, social services, and
> armed resistance. That is the correct strategy, straight out of the
> Marxist manual for national liberation. In the Middle East, it's
> populist Islamists like Sadr and Nasrallah who are better
> Marxist-Leninists than self-identified secular ones. -- Yoshie
I see relief work, and armed defense of fellow Shiites, but a political program? We could have had a pretty good idea what the Bolsheviks would do when they took state power - they wrote about it extensively. What would Sadr do? Kill and/or expel Sunnis? We don't know; maybe power would moderate him. In the US, the Christian right run social services, but they come with religious strings attached and could be viewed as a means of building loyalty. Is that their political program?
Doug