The Resistance

Lenin's Tomb is spot on again. Read the whole piece!

Actually, Pollitt's position is a little worse than this. A little humility would compel her to recognise that the Iraqi resistance is doing far more to frustrate American imperialism than then American left is. The resistance is supporting us. It is their courageous insistence on combatting an enemy with immense death-dealing power, confronting them in the streets despite years of savage murder, despite the prospect of incineration and shredding, that is causing Bush's unpopularity. This is what caused the House to pass a bill opposing permanent bases in Iraq. It is this which is causing the Pentagon to draw up contingency plans for withdrawal. It wouldn't matter what position American liberals took if the resistance could do it alone, but the antiwar movement is - no matter what the President says - the decider. The articulate antiwar liberals in the media have a unique responsibility to combat racist myths and Pentagon propaganda, not collude in it. Instead of energetically accomodating itself to the beheaders, kidnappers, torturers and murderers in the Democratic Party, the antiwar movement must maintain its political independence. It should stolidly insist that the resistance is largely a necessary response to occupation and not some inexplicable excrescence. Then it will not be caught in the trap of calling for an unprincipled withdrawal which will empower people whom they concede are nothing else but psychopaths, tyrants, theocrats and beheaders. It isn't even necessary for the Nation liberals to ra-ra the resistance: they simply have to stop colluding in lies, recognising old-fashioned colonial mystique for what it is, and let people draw their own conclusions.

Fanciful Hopes on Iraq.

With the occupation nearing it's fourth year and the Iraqi people drowning in it's own blood it is hard not to grasp for the first source of hope that you can find. It appears that the American tactic in Iraq is to divide and conquer: fan the flames of sectarian and ethnic divides through sponsoring the death squads from the Ministry of Interior, federalize Iraq, endless talking in the international press of shia and sunni, etc.

Of course, the important things are happening now. The Iraqi oil is going to be privatized, that is, forcefully stolen from a people without their say in it. Though lacking healthcare, a functioning infrastructure, security and mostly employment Iraqis are now facing the loss of the lifeblood of their economy.

But there is hope. One of the cornerstones in orientalist ideology is that they are not like us: they are preoccupied with sensualist or mystical activities. They are something else that are not us. This ideology serves the same purpose now as it did a hundred or two hundred years ago. It is hard for european or american workers to feel solidarity with someone you seem to have nothing in common with. I've written before about the Iraqi labour union, I believe, and this is about them once more. Like all the arabic nations, socialism and the labour movement has been instrumental in the development of the 20th century politics and nation-states that exist in the Middle East. If Iraqi Labour does indeed turn against it's occupant as they attempt the privatization: who knows what would happen? Personally, I can rest assured that the gendarmes of the Iraqi puppet regime and the combatants in the American and British troops would attempt to break a strike - but what then? Is there hope of a united front against the imperialists, or even a progressive movement inside the religiously dominated attacks? It is a fanciful hope, but it is at least a hope.

For those versed in Norwegian, read Klassekampens article here.