[Marxism] Re: They are all Baathists now?

[l.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx (Lueko Willms)]

.     Am  21.11.04
 schrieb  sgabosch@xxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Gabosch)
     bei  /ALIST/MARXMAIL
      in  6.1.1.1.0.20041121025356.01dba148@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   ueber  Re: [Marxism] They are all Baathists now? (was: General claims Falluja

SG> In many ways, this is a factual issue - if not Baathist regime
SG> remnants as described by the Militant, or not just them, then who has
SG> been or who has also been battling the U.S. and the U.S.-backed Iraqi
SG> troops in recent days?

   I don't repeat the quotes Steve supplies from this article, people  
may well look it up themselves.

   I'm quite certain that many former soldiers and officers of the  
former Iraqi army are part of the resistance groups which fight  
against the US occupation.

   Iraq had a conscript army, so practically every adult male has been  
in the army and has received military training.

   It is also true, that the fighting methods of at least a part of  
the resistance groups remind of the political outlook of the Saddam  
Hussein regime, by intimidating people thru the threat and actual  
application of physical violence up to death. To me, looking from the  
outside, it seems that anonymous bomb attacks which kill more  
'innocent' bystanders than soldiers of the occupation force, are not  
very helpful to politically arm and mobilize the masses, raising their  
self-esteem and self-confidence.

   But nonetheless, even these -- in my opinion -- unfortunate violent  
acts have apparently not driven the masses to support the occupation  
and look to the empire as the first source of protection of limb and  
life. I think that the hatred of the occupation is rather rising than  
declining.

   And everybody assumes these activists as fighting against the  
occupation, even if they use those violent acts to denounce those who  
fight, and to mobiize spport to the occupation and the effort to  
impose a new political regime from outside forces on the Iraqi people  
with military force, against their will.

   The problem with the news and opinion articels in this week's The  
Militant is that their way of presenting the situation can be used to  
justify a "plague on both your houses", a newtral stance between the  
resistance of the Iraqi people and the foreign occupation, because  
supposedly there is not yet a "revolutionary resistance".

   Well, quite sure there is not a clear cut proletarian revolutionary  
party with a codified program referring to the first four congresses  
of the Comintern, to Marx and Engels, and what have you, and leading  
the Iraqi working class against both the US occupation _and_ the Iraqi  
national bourgeoisie.

   So what?

   Coming back to those famous "Baathist remnants" which "The  
Militant" has rediscovered this week, when not even the bourgeois  
media paint such a picture, in my opinion the primeary crime of the  
Saddam Hussein Regime was to practically disarm the Iraqi nation in  
face of the assault of the empire, divide the nation instead of  
unifying it, mouthing empty threats of what horrors they would inflict  
on the US soldiers, should they dare to attack, and then to give up  
cowardly.

   If there are now former soldiers and officers of Saddam's armed  
forces actually engaged in a fight against the invader, then this is  
already a break with the past of the actual Saddam Hussein regime.

   And whatever their intentions, the struggle which they have engaged  
will not end in a restoration of the same Saddam regime oppressing the  
Iraqi masses.

   I am convinced that a) it wil be the evolution of those who today  
actively fight the occupation will result in a revolutionary movement  
based on the masses -- where probably a part of those too much  
clinging to the methods of the oppressive regime before will retire  
from that evolution -- and that b) the main task of revolutionary  
fighters in other countries, and especially in those whose governments  
take an active part in the occupation, will be to fight for the  
immediate withdrawal, and not tell the Iraqi people that their fight  
is futile and that they should wait for the Iraqi working class to  
form their own party, unrelated to the current struggle.



Yours,
Lüko Willms
/------------ L.WILLMS@xxxxxxxxxxx --
/------------ Lueko.Willms@xxxxxxxxxxx      -- "Get PGP Key" im Betreff

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