[Marxism] Does the Resistance Target Civilians? AccordingtoUSIntel, Not Really [comments/criticisms appreciated]

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The general trend in modern war is for more and more slaughter of
civilians on all sides, and a growing disproportion between civilian and
military casualties with the former vastly surpassing the latter.

This isn't a trend we advocate, call for, hail, or "defend" against
pacifist criticism. It is a historical trend -- partly political, partly
technological. We don't denounce the civilian casualties caused by
imperialism, but when civilians are killed by "our side" -- yes,
including the people applying for jobs in the army and police -- we
don't or at least shouldn't cry, "Hooray for the latest revolutionary
triumph." We blame all the dead - military and civilian -- on US
imperialism.

Vietnam was a civil war.  That is often forgotten.  A real, longstanding
national and CLASS civil war with deep roots. The reasons for the
violence against civilians in Iraq are not really identical.

We support the Iraqi people -- the whole nation -- against US
imperialism in this conflict.  But the fact is that the forces fighting
the imperialists today are all bourgeois political forces. They
represent classes hostile to the mass of workers and peasants.  They are
classes that have an interest in preventing the masses from taking on
too much political weight in the struggle.

Does that mean we go into neutral on the struggle.  Absolutely not.  But
we also cannot idealize and make ourselves propagandists for the
specific characteristics that this bourgeois-led resistance (including
the character of the former regime which was forced out by the invasion)
gives to the struggle.

Our fire has to be on our own rulers.  But I am not at all sure we will
find all that many positive examples from the Iraqi struggle about how
to wage a liberation war.

We fight for the freedom of Iraq from occupation, and we defend the
struggle of the entire Iraqi people as it is against  that occupation.
And we condemn imperialism for all the violence taking place because of
the occupation.
Fred Feldman


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