[Marxism] Support Their Troops: Towards a United Front

["Carl Webb" <carlwebb@xxxxxxxxx>]

Support Their Troops: Towards a United Front
July 22nd, 2007

Alexander Cockburn raises the pertinent question: When every antiwar
event takes pains to offer its support to the troops engaged in an
illegal and immoral war against a sovereign nation, why no one is
offering similar support to those defending their homeland?

Lawrence McGuire, a North Carolinian now teaching in Montpellier,
France, organized a meeting of antiwar Americans and various
interested French parties there at which I spoke last fall. Since
then, we've been discussing off and on the strange fact that while
two-thirds of all Americans oppose the war in Iraq and want the troops
to come home, the antiwar movement is pretty much dead. McGuire raises
the matter of direct solidarity with Iraqis fighting the US presence
in Iraq. In other words, support their troops:

"I was reading a recent piece by Phyllis Bennis recently. She talked
about the 'US military casualties' and the 'Iraqi civilian victims'
and it struck me that the grand taboo of the antiwar movement is to
show the slightest empathy for the resistance fighters in Iraq. They
are never mentioned as people for whom we should show concern, much
less admiration.

"But of course, if you are going to sympathize with the US soldiers,
who are fighting a war of aggression, than surely you should also
sympathize with the soldiers who are fighting for their homeland.
Perhaps not until the antiwar movement starts to some degree
recognizing that they should include 'the Iraqi resistance fighters'
in their pantheon of victims (in addition to US soldiers and Iraqi
civilians) will there be the necessary critical mass to have a real
movement."

Now there are many obvious reasons why the direct solidarity with
resistance fighters visible in the Vietnam antiwar struggle and the
Central American anti-intervention movement has not been visible in
the movement opposing the Iraq war. The "War on Terror" means-and was
designed to mean-that any group in the US with detectable ties or
relations with Iraqi resistance movements would be in line for savage
legal reprisals under the terms of the Patriot Act. Another important
factor: The contours of the Iraqi resistance have been murky and in
some aspects unappetizing to secular progressive coalitions in the
West, or so they virtuously claim.

But such cavils were familiar in the Sixties and Eighties too as huge
chunks of the solidarity movement found endless reasons to distance
themselves from the Vietnamese NLF or the Nicaraguan FMLN. That said,
ignorance about the Iraqi resistance is somewhat forgiveable. This
time there has been no Wilfrid Burchett reporting from behind the
lines, and that has had consequences of the kind McGuire sketches out
above.

The personal aspect of international political solidarity is not just
the stuff of nostalgic anecdote. In the late 1980s the Central
American resistance was constantly among us here in the United States
in physical form. While Daniel Oretega and Rosario Murillo worked the
Hollywood liberal circuit, the sanctuary movement sheltered militants
and sympathizers in churches across the country and defied federal
efforts to seize them. Labor organizers from El Salvador traveled
across North America from local to friendly local. I can remember
being at a picnic of a union local striking a door factory in
Springfield, Oregon, southeast of Eugene, where a man from a radical
labor coalition in El Salvador got a cordial reception from the
strikers and their families as they swapped stories of their
respective battles.

The other day I found in a box of old papers in my garage a directory
to "sister cities"-towns in the United States that had paired with
beleagured towns in Nicaragua, regularly exchanging delegations. The
directory was as thick as a medium-sized telephone book. There were
hundreds of such pairings and many were the individual pairing they
led to. People's Express, the "backpackers' airline," as it used to be
called, would shuttle demure sisters in the struggle from Vermont or
the Pacific Northwest to Miami, for onward passage to Managua and a
rendezvous with some valiant son of Sandino or oppressed Nica sister
liberated by North American inversion from the oppressions of Latin
patriarchy.

Today there is no draft, a prime factor in stocking the Vietnam
antiwar movement. This absence of the draft is certainly a major
factor in the weakness of the antiwar movement. But though there was
no draft in the Reagan years, there was certainly was that very lively
political culture of anti-intervention in the 1980s.

It looked as though just such a vibrant left antiwar movement was
flaring into life in 2003. But many of its troops have either veered
into 9/11 kookdom, or whining about global warming or nourished an
often unspoken resolve to vest all hopes in a Democratic presidency
after 2008. The bulk of the antiwar movement has become subservient to
the Democratic Party and to the agenda of its prime candidates for the
presidency in 2008, with Hillary Clinton in the lead.

To describe the antiwar movement in its effective form is really to
mention a few good efforts-the anti-recruitment campaigns, the tours
by those who have lost children in Iraq-or three or four brave
souls-Cindy Sheehan, who single-handedly reanimated the antiwar
movement last year and now vows to run against house speaker Nancy
Pelosi unless the latter stops blocking impeachment proceedings, or
the radical Catholic Kathy Kelly, or Medea Benjamin and her "Code
Pink" activists occupying Hilary Clinton's office and ambushing her
for youtube.

A simple question: Has the end of America's war on Iraq been brought
closer by the recapture of the US Congress by the Democrats in
November 2006? The answer is that when it comes to the actual war,
which has led to the bloody disintegration of Iraqi society, the
deaths of up to 5,000 Iraqis a month, the death and mutilation of US
soldiers every day, nothing at all has happened since the Democrats
rode to victory in November courtesy of popular revulsion in America
against the war. I don't think there is much of an independent Left in
America today, if there was, then Lawrence McGuire's statement about
the lack of solidarity with the Iraqi resistance wouldn't be so
obviously on the mark.

Meanwhile, Sami Ramadani offers insights into how the Iraqi resistance
can bring together its disparate elements and turn events to its
decisive advantage.

Yesterday's Guardian report on armed resistance organisations in Iraq
and their plans to form a political front was a fresh and illuminating
snapshot of the most dangerous and far-reaching conflict of our times.
By eschewing the usual cliches and bundles of distortions about any
Muslims bearing arms, the report enriches our understanding of the
best organised of the resistance groups active in parts of Baghdad and
the areas up to and including Mosul, north of the capital. What they
say indicates a major shift in tactics and strategy, but also reveals
these groups' achilles heels.

Politically, one of the most telling statements was from the
spokesperson of a faction of the Ansar al-Sunna resistance group:

"Resistance isn't just about killing Americans without any aims or
goals … Our people have come to hate al-Qaida, which gives the
impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are
terrorists. Suicide bombing is not the best way to fight because it
kills innocent civilians. We are against indiscriminate killing -
fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy. They [al-Qaida]
believe that all Shia are kuffar [unbelievers]- and most of the Sunnis
as well … The Americans magnify their role, even though they are
responsible for a minority of resistance operations - remember that
the Americans brought al-Qaida to Iraq."

The statement is significant in two respects. One is the fact that
al-Qaida is being denounced openly, and the second is that the man
making the statement is from Ansar al-Sunna, one the organisations
that gained notoriety in its indiscriminate methods of fighting and
sectarian ideology. Equally significant is the fact that the other
faction of Ansar al-Sunna is being accused of working with al-Qaida.

One of the least sectarian of the seven groups forming the new
alliance is the 1920 Revolution Brigades, whose leader, Harith
al-Dhari, was assassinated recently by al-Qaida, according to Muthanna
al-Thari, spokesperson of the very influential Association of Muslim
Scholars. The leader of the AMS, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, is the
assassinated leader's uncle and the most influential of the
anti-occupation Sunni cleric. Reversing earlier statements, Sheikh
Dhari, has also become very critical of al-Qaida. His and other recent
anti al-Qaida statements are fuelled by the enormous loathing that
Iraqis of all sects and ethnicities have for al-Qaida and all
sectarian attacks. Indeed, popular opinion in the streets of Iraq
habitually accuse the occupation of backing al-Qaida to spread
sectarian divisions and split the struggle against the occupation.

The seven groups are not only anti al-Qaida but also keen to distance
themselves from the Saddamist wing of the Ba'ath party, led by Izz'at
al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's deputy until the 2003 invasion.

Such political credentials should in theory make the task of unity
with Muqtada Sadr's movement less difficult. However, the resistance
leaders who talked to the Guardian accuse Sadr's Mahdi army of
sectarian killings while ignoring the fact that most of the sectarian
attacks have been aimed at Sadr City, Najaf, Kufa and Karbala. For his
part, Sadr has conceded that his movement has been infiltrated by its
enemies, including the occupation authorities. Referring to the
climate of chaos and occupation presence, Sadrist spokesmen have often
referred to "the ease with which sectarian crimes could be committed
by anyone wearing black and claiming to be from the Mahdi army."

Following the second attack on the Samarra Shia shrine, Sadr accused
the occupation of being behind the attack - a position echoed by Sunni
clergy and secular forces - and stressed unity with Sunnis. He later
accused the US of sabotaging his attempts to unite with Sunnis. While
it obviously suits the US to divide the opposition to its occupation
of the country, Sadr's own tactics are attacked for being one of the
biggest obstacles to greater anti-occupation unity. These tactics
include on-off participation in the government and the Sadrists'
presence in parliament (in the sect-based Coalition List that won most
of the seats in the January 2006 occupation-controlled elections).

Though some of the criticisms of Iranian policies by the resistance
leaders interviewed by the Guardian are based in fact, the seven
groups' hostility to Iran is still trapped within the old
Saddamist-style anti-Iranian chauvinism that fuelled his eight-year
war against Iran following the 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Shah
regime. Racist propaganda against the Iranian people lasted for a
quarter of a century and permeated Iraqi society and its educational
system. The US-led propaganda campaign against Iran has thus fallen on
receptive ears. The US is happy to see Iraqis directing their wrath
against the fictitious "presence of hundreds of thousands of Iranians
fighting alongside the US forces to evict Sunnis from Baghdad and
replace them with Shia" - in the words of one Iraqi victim of the
occupation who, with her daughter, was forced to leave Iraq after the
murder of her brother.

The seven resistance groups don't appear to be facing up to the fact
that effectively by far the biggest organised armed resistance group
in Iraq is Sadr's Mahdi army, estimated to be well over 100,000 strong
- or that, in the absence of strong non-religious anti-occupation
organisations, millions of people across Iraq are supporters of
Muqtada Sadr's anti-occupation message. US jets and helicopters are
daily bombarding Sadr City in Baghdad and towns south of Baghdad.
Thousands of Sadrists are in jail and the US is acutely aware that the
Sadrists remain one of the biggest obstacles to controlling Iraq.

Last but not least, when talking about the resistance in Iraq it's
important to remember that most of the thousands of military
operations that the Pentagon reports are carried out monthly against
the occupation forces go unclaimed by any organisation. This confirms
the impression that I and many Iraqis have that most of the armed
resistance to the occupation is conducted by localised groups in the
villages and cities of Iraq. Armed resistance to the occupation has
much deeper and more popular roots than the politicians in Washington
and London dare to admit. For admitting it, at least in public, means
abandoning their much trumpeted "exit strategy", otherwise known as
having your cake and eating it. Having a pro US government in Baghdad,
withdrawing most of the troops but keeping military bases in Iraq is
not what Iraqis mean by ending the military and economic occupation of
Iraq. Such an exit strategy will not stop the resistance and the sea
of popular support that feeds and protects it.

For even those who are engaged in anti-occupation political and trade
union activities in Iraq do not hide their support for the
"al-muqawama al-sharifa" ("the honourable resistance" as distinct from
terrorism). And it is these deep Iraqi roots which are likely, sooner
or later, to produce the united front that rises above the differences
based on religion or ethnicity. A slogan gaining momentum in the
streets of Iraq reflects this popular mood:"La lil ihtilal; la lil
ta'iffia; la lil irhab": "No to the occupation; no to sectarianism; no
to terrorism."

http://fanonite.org/2007/07/22/support-their-troops-towards-a-united-front/

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