Frank Smyth, Marc Cooper and Naomi Klein

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Recently Naomi Klein wrote an article in the Nation Magazine (a US 
liberal publication dating back to the 1860s) that has angered some of 
the magazine's other contributors. Written on the occasion of the 
Republican convention in NYC and titled "Bring Najaf to New York," it 
states:

"Najaf is not just another Iraqi city; it is the city of the dead, where 
the cemeteries go on forever, a place so sacred that every devout Shiite 
dreams of being buried there. And Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers are 
not just another group of generic terrorists out to kill Americans; 
their opposition to the occupation represents the overwhelmingly 
mainstream sentiment in Iraq. Yes, if elected Sadr would try to turn 
Iraq into a theocracy like Iran, but for now his demands are for direct 
elections and an end to foreign occupation."

full: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040913&s=klein

This prompted Marc Cooper to write a nasty attack on his blog 
(www.marccooper.com), which concludes that Klein's "column is a 
forthright apology for the religio-fascist militias of Muqtada Al Sadr. 
Indeed, it’s damn near a call for the peace movement to join in 
solidarity with his Mahdi Army." He also says that there is "no 
evidence" whatsoever that the militia represents "mainstream sentiment" 
in Iraq.

I reminded Cooper that the May 20 Financial Times reported the 
following: "An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge in the 
popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric fighting 
coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see US 
troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers." The FT adds, 
"Respondents saw Mr Sadr as Iraq's second most influential figure after 
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most senior Shia cleric."

(I should mention, by the way, that Cooper has refused to allow any of 
my comments--at least written under my own name--to be posted to his 
widely read blog after the FT item was posted. I am under the distinct 
impression that high-profile liberal journalists such as Cooper, 
Alterman, Doug Ireland and others have recently begun publishing blogs 
because they perceive the Internet as an important venue. What they are 
not comfortable with is the give-and-take of listservs such as PEN-L or 
Marxmail. A blog allows them to have their cake and eat it too.)

While Cooper's piece is little more than an incoherent rant, you get a 
much more polished version of the same self-serving nonsense from Frank 
Smyth on the Foreign Policy in Focus website 
(http://www.fpif.org/papers/0409progiraq.html). Titled "Who Are the 
Progressives in Iraq? The Left, the Right, and the Islamists," it 
broadens the attack on Klein to include Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" 
radio show. All are smeared with the tar brush most favored by 
left-liberals--an alleged link to the ANSWER coalition led by Ramsey Clark:

"Unfortunately the knee-jerk, anti-imperialist analysis of groups like 
International A.N.S.W.E.R. has wormed its way into several progressive 
outlets. Dispatches and columns in The Nation as well as reports and 
commentary on the independently syndicated radio program 'Democracy Now' 
have all but ignored the role of Iraqi progressives while highlighting, 
if not championing, the various factions of the Iraqi-based resistance 
against the U.S.-led occupation without bothering to ask who these 
groups are and what they represent for Iraqis."

Basically, Smyth views the armed resistance as a mixture of evil 
ex-Baathists and Shia fanatics led by the woman and gay hating Muqtada 
al-Sadr. He writes:

"Others like The Nation’s Naomi Klein, meanwhile, seem to have naively 
fallen for the al-Mahdi militia that recently fought U.S. Marines in 
Najaf. The al-Mahdi militia is a loosely organized Shiite opposition 
group led by Muqtada al-Sadr. He is a young man who inherited his role 
after his father and two brothers were murdered by Saddam. Lacking 
either the maturity or training of a senior cleric, al-Sadr has tried to 
lure supporters from more-respected Shiite clerics by promoting militant 
enforcement of the most fundamental tenets of Shiite Islam, including 
the explicit repression of gays and women."

Without denying for one instant that al-Sadr has some really backward 
ideas on gays and women, he does have the right idea about the US 
occupiers. He has said, "I appeal to the fighters and mujahedeen in 
Karbala to stand together so as none of our holy sites and cities are 
defiled. We are prepared for any American escalation and we expect 
one…Let remind you of Vietnam. We are an Iraqi people that has faith in 
God, and his prophet and his family. The means of victory that are 
available to us are much more than what the Vietnamese had. And, God 
willing, we shall be victorious."

Against these gun-toting and women-hating fanatics who would certainly 
never be invited on a Nation Magazine Caribbean cruise, Smyth much 
prefers the Communist Party of Iraq which is supposedly hostile to 
American interests. In voting for the quisling Iraqi National Council, 
the CP came in second with 55 votes.

Actually, Klein's got it right. Despite her autonomist leanings, she 
understands--perhaps instinctively--that the state is composed of bodies 
of armed men as Lenin put it in "State and Revolution." Mao said 
something similar when he said that political power grows out of the 
barrel of a gun.

For left-liberal intellectuals in the USA like Smyth and Cooper who are 
susceptible to Democratic Party pressures, it is clearly inadequate to 
come out and defend the DP party line on the need to stay the course in 
Iraq. This smacks too much of Christopher Hitchens even if there really 
is no substantial difference between Hitchens and the liberal 
intelligentsia on the right of the USA to determine events on the ground 
in Iraq.

So the "communists" in Iraq become a surrogate for their own 
pro-imperialist politics. The argument goes: if the commies work with 
the PGA, how bad can it be? Figuratively speaking, wrapping an M-16 in a 
hammer-and-sickle banner might make it acceptable to some.

Smyth and Cooper are self-styled Latin Americanists. In the first case, 
you are dealing with somebody who wrote about the FMLN in El Salvador 
for the Nation Magazine with a degree of sympathy, while Cooper held 
down a job as a translator for Allende in Chile.

Perhaps lack of familiarity with Iraqi history might lead one to adopt a 
more benign view of the CP than what is reasonable given its tendency to 
temporize with bourgeois governments. Although Smyth makes a big deal 
out of the fact that Saddam Hussein terrorized the CP, the party had no 
trouble working out deals with Batista in Cuba. At its congress in 1939 
the Cuban Communists promised to "adopt a more positive  attitude 
towards Colonel Batista". Batista was no longer "...the focal point of 
reaction; but the focal point of democracy". (New York Daily Worker, 
October 1, 1939).

The Comintern stated in its journal: "Batista...no longer represents the 
 center of reaction...the people who are working for the overthrow of 
Batista are no longer acting in the interests of the Cuban people." 
(World News and Views, No 60 1938).  Historian Hugh Thomas once 
commented that the Catholic laity had more conflicts with Batista's 
dictatorship than the Cuban Communists did.

Meanwhile, the CP in Chile was also no slouch when it came to 
prettifying Uncle Sam. In 1938, Carlos Contrera Labarca, the General 
Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party explained to the workers of 
Chile why US investment was good for the country:

"As for foreign capital invested in Chile, the people have always 
respected and always will respect the provisions of the political 
Constitution of the state which guarantee the property of foreign 
capital and, in general, of all capital, requiring at the same time that 
the capitalists, national and foreign, respect them on their side. The 
people have never ceased to recognize the need for the cooperation of 
foreign capital and are still disposed to solicit that cooperation in 
the future, if the national interest requires it."

Sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would endear the CP of Iraq 
to someone like Paul Bremer. It is also exactly the sort of thing that 
Naomi Klein has condemned:

>>The reconstruction of Iraq has emerged as a vast protectionist 
racket, a neocon New Deal that transfers limitless public funds --in 
contracts, loans and insurance--to private firms, and even gets rid of 
the foreign competition to boot, under the guise of "national security." 
Ironically, these firms are being handed this corporate welfare so they 
can take full advantage of CPA-imposed laws that systematically strip 
Iraqi industry of all its protections, from import tariffs to limits on 
foreign ownership. Michael Fleisher, head of private-sector development 
for the CPA, recently explained to a group of Iraqi businesspeople why 
these protections had to be removed. "Protected businesses never, never 
become competitive," he said. Quick, somebody tell OPIC and Paul 
Wolfowitz.<<

Full: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040105&c=4&s=klein

My suspicion is that it is this sort of outcry against the foreign 
economic domination of Iraq that has Smyth and Cooper upset, rather than 
her supposed adaptation to Islamic radicalism.

In any case, the fight of the Iraqi resistance to foreign occupation is 
progressive in and of itself whatever the failures of the largely 
religious based leadership to live up to Western liberal expectations. 
While nobody will ever mistake the Mahdi army for the NLF in Vietnam, 
there is one thing that Vietnam and Iraq have in common. They are 
battlegrounds whose outcome will determine whether the USA will be able 
to dominate the rest of the world with ease or difficulty. We hope that 
it will be as difficult as possible. A victory over the Iraqi resistance 
will serve as a beachhead for further control over the Arab world and 
its oil resources and geopolitical assets. The imperialist mouthpieces 
such as Thomas Friedman understand this completely, even it is lost on 
some of our left-liberal friends.


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