[Marxism] Did Saddam earn "credit" by sponsoring resistance to US occupation?

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Fred,
You seem to know what you are talking about, and I agree with most of
what
you say.  However, I strongly hesitate to give positive credit to the
rotten, butchering tyrant Saddam.  Certainly we do not want to appear
before
the US populace as defenders of Saddam.  It is of course important to
point
out how he was empowered in large part by the US government.  As long as
this tyrant was useful for US imperialism he was OK.  But not for us
anti-imperialists.  Comradely, Jim Morgan



Response by Fred Feldman
Well, this was something I had to come to grips with.  I, after all, had
frequently criticized Saddam for his reactionary, pro-American course
that he brought in with him from his direct takeover in 1979. I blasted
him for the crime of the war against Iran which began as a
counter-revolutionary war and, even after the revolution was halted
(although not completely reversed as he and his US sponsors had hoped),
remained a completely reactionary war.  I blasted him for the brutal
repression of the Iraqi people and for his illusions that Iraq could
take Kuwait without isolating Iraq in the world, and creating an opening
for the US to attack Iraq.  I went after him when he deserted his troops
and left them to be slaughtered in Kuwait and on the road to Basra.  I
blasted him for his incapacity to defend the country against the
bombings, and for his refusal to do what could be done to block the US
war drive against Iraq.   And my interpretation of his actions in the
invasion, which he had contributed little to blocking with his
combination of passivity and bravado, was right in line with this.

Now the evidence indicates that I was at least partly wrong on the last
point.  Saddam did not simply cave in though many of his troops seemed
to want to fight.  Perhaps under the pressure of some of the officers
and so on who wanted to fight  but knew that a frontal battle was doomed
at that point, Saddam seems to have played a part in the initial
planning for the current resistance.  Not some Grand Conspiracy that is
responsible for everything that is happening today -- a lot of which was
made possible by what the occupiers have done to outrage the Iraqi
people pretty much across the board socially, religiously, etc.

Frankly, this is not an unprecedented event.  Chiang Kai-shek was the
brutal bourgeois-nationalist butcher of the Chinese revolution, justly
hated by the masses.  But when the Japanese invaded in 1931, he decided
that his percentages were in fighting and not in becoming a Japanese
puppet (as some of his Kuomintang allies did).
And real fighters around the world were for blocking with him against
the Japanese, even while fighting for the Chinese masses to reject his
leadership.

I think that fighters were ready to acknowledge that it was better that
Chiang had decided to fight the Japanese rather than join them or simply
cave in, and that revolutionary fighters in China were in favor of
blocking with him to push the invaders out, even while fighting to win
the masses to opposition to his rule.

If anything, Chiang was an even bigger murderer and closer to being a
puppet of imperialism than Saddam. (Eventually on Formosa -- now Taiwan
-- he became one quite openly for decades. The son-of-a-bitch lived to a
ripe old age.) Nonetheless, I don't deny that his decision to resist
rather than just cut and run was a contribution to the world struggle.
That doesn't mean letting bygones be bygones, or having any confidence
in the leadership he provided.  My attitude toward Saddam is basically
the same.
Fred Feldman



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