[Marxism] Should the Iraqi resistance resume the50-yearwarbetween Iraq and "Iraqi" Kurdistan ? Or, In defense of the "well-known national liberalism of Comrade Lenin"

[David Walters <dwalters@xxxxxxx>]

I think I'm closer to Fred's point of view...it seems that Jose is
assigning a sort of collective guilt for Kurdistan's current
'privileged' position.  An indendent Kurdistan is a position that the
entire international Left supported prior to the Gulf war 12 years ago.

I would argue that our "position" hasn't changed: unconditional
self-determination for ALL of Kurdistan. I think this was the position
of the Bolsheviks toward Georgia (and as Fred points out, the
reactionary, counter-revolutionary, murderous, neocolonial regimes in
the Baltic). The Bolsheviks had to "finish the revolution" as the Civil
War crossed the borders of the pre-Tsarist state, to defend themselves,
etc, but that never meant going back on self-determination. Not ever.

Fred also brings up a salient point that everyone seems, conveniently,
to overlook: that the US imperialists have REFUSED self-determination
to the Kurds. It is a state of affairs the reactionary Turkish gov't
seems quite happy with, since as everyone has known, and the Turks have
publicized widely, that if Kurdistan ever declared it's independence,
they would have to 'react'.

Ergo, the big political failure of the Iraqi resistance in it's many
wings, is not having raised the call for an
independence.self-determination for Kurdistan... since doing so would
would not only commit themselves to the human rights of the Kurdish
people (and we all know that this is the major incentive of the Kurds
to default to imperialism against Baath oppression) it would start a
division between the imperialists and Kurdish parties on the one hand,
and the Kurdish people on the other, who in their majority are for an
independent Kurdistan. This would radicalize the entire area, from
Turkey to Iran to Syria. It's ironic that in their silence, the Iraqi
resistance position is the same as that of the imperialists when it
comes to Kurdistan: *forced* integration of Kurds into the Iraqi state.

David Walters


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