[lbo-talk] Why the French Resistance Is Not the Model for Iraq

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Mon Nov 27 14:25:33 PST 2006


On 11/23/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> If resistance in Iraq were like the French Resistance, Washington
> might have already had a big victory party, a majority of the American
> public celebrating it, and moved onto Iran and Syria.
> --
> Yoshie

I haven't read Tariq Ali on this matter but the "French Resistance" should not be anyone's model for resistance to occupation. The French groups who resisted occupation were a very thin layer of the French population and would not have been "effective" at all except that they occasionally blew up a railway turntable. These were by far their most "effective" actions. In doing so they killed French citizens and stopped commerce, so we shouldn't think that the French avoided civilian casualties. But if the goal of the French resistance was an Allied victory, blowing up infrastructure of commerce was about the only thing that they occasionally got right.

The problem is precisely that -- the only goal that the various groups in France opposing German occupation could unite around was _allied_ victory.

A good comparison could be made to the Italian Resistance, which began before the war and lasted until after the Allied occupation of Italy. The Italian resistance to Mussolini had its own goals that were separate from Allied goals and thus there were times when the Allies let the Nazis take care of the Italian resistance when it was possible for the U.S. forces to stop such actions. When northern Italian cities revolted and established their own governments, the U.S. let the Luftwaffe bomb those cities even though the allies had complete control over the airspace.

If the French Resistance was a real independent force the Allies would have handed their names over to the Nazis just in time for a proper slaughter.

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