[Marxism] Militant article on Iraq (as compared with Iran editorial)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What is the basic stance of the Militant (fair and balanced?) news
article on Iraq (republished below).:
 
 No support against occupation. . And the assumption that those carrying
out mass slaughers of
Shia are exactly the same as those attacking US forces, and that the
attacks on US forces have qualitatively the same character.  (The
evidence of
this is not at all strong but in the "proletarianized" Militant, any
stick is good enough to beat an "opponent" -- and the
bourgeois-nationalist/Islamist "opponents," not US imperialism, are the
main enemy in Iraq from the standpoint of the Militant.)

The Militant makes it clear that they have the same basic stance toward
Iraqis who attack US troops. They hope and they want their readers to
hope that the resistance fighters get what they deserve as the criminals
they are. The US troops may not be "our troops" but at least they aren't
Iraqi bourgeois nationalists or Islamists.

The Militant may seem to have exactly the same harsh attitude toward any
and all bourgeois nationalist formations but this is not quite true.
Their disposition is much sunnier when it comes to the Kurds. Like the
Sunni and Shia Iraqis, they are an oppressed -people.

But the particular history of the Kurdish people and the political
forces has enabled the latter to effectively portray the Arabs -- the
bourgeois nationalists and the Islamists and so forth -- as the main
enemy and the prime source of their oppression. Thus, although they
also have military forces in the field and even carry out assassinations
and repressions, they are in general tactical agreement with the
Militant on the identity of the main enemy in the Iraqi situation -- not
the occupation but the bourgeois nationalist/Islamist forces that oppose
it. They fight the Sunnis and sometimes the Shia -- but never the US
troops. They focus,  like the Militant, on  their "main enemy."

This has made them the better bourgeois nationalists in the view of the
Militant.


Note the way the Militant dissolves the issue of the attitude toward US
imperialism in its war against Iraq into some abstract question of
whether the resistance groups are "progressive" in some general historic
way. The issue is whether the resistance is more progressive or less
reactionary, or more in line with the historic needs of humanity in
terms of the sovereignty of oppressed nations today, than is the US
occupation today. Imperialism is the ,most reactionary force in the
world today. This was true when Japan invaded China under Chiang
Kai-shek, and in Ethiopia when Italy invaded Haile Selassie's empire.
It is true today.

Basically, the Militant article is the Bush administration analysis of
what is happening in Iraq, with a few class labels patched on where Bush
contents himself with "terrorists" and "fascists." No
solidarity with anyone who resists the occupation. I guess you can't get
much more "proletarian" than that!
 
Still the most striking thing for me is that this article and the
editorial on Iraq appear to me to be on different lines on questions of
principle.  Of course, the articles on these two countries have
basically been on the same line since shortly after the Militant adopted
the don't-resist-the-occupation-till-you-have-a-proletarian-party line.
For a short time after the occupation and the Militant's adoption of the
new line, Iran was covered in an American-triumphalist spirit.  Iran was
in denial about the coming invasion.  They were paralyzed with fear --
"like a deer in the headlights" -- about the inevitably coming
destruction of the Islamic regime as the US rose to hegemony over Europe
through "proxy wars" against states in the Middle East-South Asia.
 
But after it became clear that Iran's powers of resistance are on a
substantially higher level than was the situation in Iraq under Saddam.
The Iranian regime has great opposition and greater discontent, but it
is not unpopular on the broad scale that Saddam had become before and
especially after the 1991 Gulf War.
 
It has now been two weeks since the Barnes Open Letter to straighten out
the party on Iran and make it the same as the line on the Iraqi
resistance -- that is, completely and unreservedly hostile including in
the conflict with the United States -- and the conflict of lines and
PRINCIPLES is, if anything, sharper than ever.
 
The letter was immediately aimed at convincing -- and, if he could not
be convinced, intimidating -- Ma'mud Shirvani into bringing his
presentations on Iran into line with the Barnesian line on Islamism and
the Iraqi resistance forces. Mah'mud is a very loyal supporter of the
SWP's politics but he is not in fact a weak personality, and he knows
Iran a hell of a lot better than Barnes, who lives in a world of
intersecting, converging, and conflicting abstractions which rarely
touch ground unless they can find some instance of confirmation and are
inherently uncorrectable (although Barnes can shift his abstractions
without notice to anybody, for he is the standard of homogeneity).
 
Not only must homogeneity be maintained, it must grow continually.
There must always be fewer differences today than there were yesterday,
and fewer differences tomorrow than there were today.  Or else the party
drifts toward destruction.  The party leadership's role is to prevent
this from happening BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
 
Barnes-style "political homogeneity" is the indispensable component,
according to the SWP, of a party capable of making the revolution. And
since only a party where everyone is in political agreement can make a
revolution, anyone who has a difference of opinion with Barnes has a
heavy responsibility to consider.  They could threaten the revolution
with  defeat simply by expressing their opinion and sticking to it. The
only alternative is to destruction of the party, according to the
Barnesian norms, is to preserve homogeneity by expelling those who
refuse to give up another view. For the party must be homogeneous or the
reolution is doomed.
 
The responsibility of maybe destroying the party by sticking with your
opinion is a hard one for those who hold different opinions to deal
with.  I know it had me buffaloed.  For quite a long time, as the new
dictatorial regime was being established, I was fearful to express my
different opinions thoroughly for fear of undermining homogeneity.
 
So the SWP is a rough place to entertain a different viewpoint, although
there actually are (even today) much rougher. Physical violence has
never really entered into SWP disputes, for example.  And being expelled
from such an organziation is not, despite its pretenses and demagoguery,
not necessarily the definitive end of revolutionary struggle for
anybody, although it does mean recognizing that a very important setback
to efforts to construct a revolutionary party in some form or other has
taken place.
Fred Feldman



 The Militant (logo) <http://www.themilitant.com/images/logo.gif> 







n a speech to the national convention of the American Legion on August
31 U.S. president George Bush said U.S. and allied troops had recently
launched a "major new campaign to end the security crisis in Baghdad." 

Two days later, the Associated Press and other news agencies reported
that the Pentagon recently submitted a report to the U.S. Congress,
titled, "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq." The report provides
facts showing the increased toll among Iraqis recently. 

Tit-for-tat suicide bombings and killings that escalated with the
bombing of a Shiite mosque in February have intensified in the last
three months. They have been carried out by militias loyal to one or the
other of contending capitalist parties vying for the upper hand in the
Iraqi government. The bulk of the victims are ordinary working
people-Sunni and Shiite. 

"The security situation is currently at its most complex state since the
initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom," the report said, using the
Pentagon's name for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. 

The Pentagon document covered the period since the government of Iraqi
prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was seated May 20. From that date through
August 11, AP said, the average number of attacks against U.S. personnel
and Iraqis was 792, about 25 percent higher than the 641 attacks
reported on average between February 11 and May 19-the previous record
for any counting period since the war began. Iraqi casualties, including
civilians and military and police personnel, have reached nearly 120 per
day, up from 80 the previous reporting period. 

"Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in
and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi
civilian population has increased in recent months," the Pentagon report
said. 

In response, "U.S. commanders have increased U.S. troop levels by about
13,000 over the past five weeks, to 140,000, mainly due to increased
violence in the Baghdad area," AP reported.  
 
Rift between premier, Washington 
In a rift between Washington and its client regime in Baghdad, the new
prime minister condemned the U.S.-led assault in early August in Sadr
City against a militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, who aims to establish
an Islamic Republic in Iraq and says his movement is the Iraqi branch of
the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Al-Maliki was also at
odds with Washington when he issued a statement in July condemning the
Israeli assault on Lebanon as "criminal." 

The two-hour battle in Sadr City broke out when U.S. and Iraqi troops
attempted to arrest a member of al-Sadr's militia charged with
involvement in "punishment and torture cell activities," reported
al-Jazeera. 

Al-Maliki said he was "very angered and pained," adding that the
U.S.-led attack undermined "national reconciliation." He apologized and
promised "this won't happen again." The Iraqi premier then reportedly
sent an envoy to Sadr City to offer cash payments to families of the
dead and wounded. 

Aides to al-Sadr said the attack on their group was punishment for a
large rally in Sadr City they organized to back Hezbollah and oppose the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Al-Sadr's supporters
participated in that rally, according to press reports.  
 
Bourgeois forces vie for power 
Wealthy Sunnis have charged that death squads targeting prominent Sunnis
operate out of the Shiite-dominated interior ministry. After taking
office al-Maliki transferred the former interior minister, a senior
figure in the governing Shiite bloc, to the ministry of finances, but
has not appeased Sunni opponents. 

Some who oppose the U.S.-led war in Iraq have portrayed such groups
organizing attacks on U.S. occupation forces as "progressive." Since the
U.S.-led overthrow of the Baath Party regime of Saddam Hussein, which
was based among the country's Sunni minority, wealthy Sunnis have
sponsored various groups that have organized suicide bombings,
kidnappings, and beheading of hostages. They have targeted not only U.S.
troops and Iraqi officials but many civilians. Their actions have
increasingly taken place in Shiite neighborhoods, markets, and mosques
in an effort to gain leverage and posts in the government. 

Among those captured in the defeat of Baathist forces in Fallujah two
years ago was Moayed Ahmed, a leader of the Army of Mohammed and a
former member of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
and Abdullah al-Janabi were among those who escaped the brutal U.S.-led
assault on that city. 

Al-Janabi is from a wealthy family of landowners who had close ties to
Saddam Hussein. Many of the Baathist regime's weapons factories and
military testing and research facilities were located on his family's
lands. 

Al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, has increasingly focused its
attacks on Shiites. In response to the rout of Baathist forces from Tall
Afar last year, for example, Zarqawi said al-Qaeda would launch a
"comprehensive war on the Shiites all over Iraq." Zarqawi was killed by
the U.S. military this year.  
 
Shiite militias: same class character 
Shiite militias involved in the fighting have a similar class
composition and use bourgeois methods like those of their Sunni
opponents. 

Al-Sadr has not supported any of the U.S.-backed governments in Iraq.
But his movement has seats in the National Assembly and now heads
several ministries in al-Maliki's administration. 

In April 2004, at the instigation of the U.S. occupation authority, an
Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr for the murder of a
rival Shiite cleric who had returned to Iraq with the aid of U.S.
troops. 

In March 2005 al-Sadr's militia attacked a picnic of students at the
University of Basra. Students said they were accused of violating Islam
by girls and boys meeting together and playing music. 

The Badr Organization, formerly the Badr Brigade, has the largest
militia. It is associated with the Supreme Council of the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Leaders of SCIRI spent years in exile in
Iran. That's where many of their 10,000 militiamen operating today were
trained. 

One component of Badr is an elite commando outfit-the Wolf Brigade. Many
Sunnis hold it responsible for revenge killings. Last year, the U.S.
military fought alongside the Wolf Brigade in operations against
Baathist forces in Mosul and Samarra, according to the New York Times. 
 


 
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