RE: [Marxism] SWP: "U.S. troops consolidate victory in Fallujah"

[Steve Gabosch <sgabosch@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a response to Walter's question about my sympathies.

I am for the immediate, unconditional, complete withdrawal of US and all
imperialist troops from Iraq.  I follow Lenin and Trotsky's revolutionary
Marxist approach toward imperialist war - I hold a revolutionary defeatist
position toward the imperialist invaders.  US/UK Out of Iraq Now, etc.

I have no sympathy of any kind for the imperialist plunderers.  Innuendos
to the contrary are unwarranted.

I did read the Saul Landau article in Counter Punch.  I agree with the
general analogy between Fallujah and Guernica in terms of the slaughter and
destruction perpetrated by the imperialist butchers in both cases.

In a military confrontation between the imperialists and any Iraqi
resistance, regardless of the political and class persuasions of the
resistance, I support the latter against the former.

I believe the character of the imperialist occupation and the class and
political character of the current Iraqi resistance needs to be evaluated
in terms of the peoples and struggles where my sympathies truly reside -
the Iraqi workers and poor farmers, Kurds, and women - and their struggles
for democracy, economic justice, self-determination, and emancipation.  In
choosing sides, I begin on the sides of the workers and poor farmers.  I
see their struggles for their democratic rights and class needs as being
struggles that are necessarily against both the imperialists and the
bourgeoisies of Iraq and the Middle East.  For this reason, I think it is
important to develop a clear understanding of both kinds of obstacles - the
objectives, capacities and relative strengths of the murderous imperialist
invaders and robbers - and the political and historical facts about the
active components of Iraqi bourgeois society, such as the current armed
resistance, which appears to be led primarily by reactionary bourgeois
Baathist forces that were not defeated in the original 2003 invasion.

My essential sympathy is with the toiling people of Iraq and their
struggles against imperialist occupiers from abroad and capitalism and
reaction at home.  I am optimistic about the historic possibility of the
Iraqi working people leading a socialist revolution in our time.

In solidarity,
- Steve Gabosch




At 12:33 PM 11/28/2004 -0800, you wrote:
> Dear Steve Gabosch -
>
> No progress seems to be taking place in this discussion.
>
> I keep on wondering where your sympathies lie in today's
> Iraq. With the foreign armies of occupation, or with the
> resistance to that occupation, by whatever means it feels
> are available to it under conditions of its occupation?
> Back in the early eighties, the SWP used to criticize the
> movement against nuclear weapons. Their indignant retort
> was: "what about concrete wars which are actually going on?"
>
> Well, the assault on Falloujah is a concrete war which is
> actually going on.
>
> You should take a moment to consider what Saul Landau is
> saying as he compares the bombardment of Falloujah with
> Guernica. Really. The comparison is quite well-taken.
>
> <
> http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edpspadoni22112204nov22,1,65
> 66408.story>
>
>
>
> Walter Lippmann
>
>
>
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