Left Apologists for the Occupation

[chlamor]

March 31, 2005

Left Apologists for the Occupation

Iraq's Right to Resist

By SHARON SMITH

Many antiwar leaders blamed John Kerry's defeat on the antiwar movement's failure to connect with America's conservative "heartland"--and have since followed Democratic Party liberals as they tack rightward to orient to this target voting base.

Indeed, liberal commentator Geov Parrish leveled harsh criticism at March 19 antiwar protesters in the Seattle Weekly, belittling antiwar rallies as "a pep rally for activists." Parrish argued, "Opposition to this war should be rooted in what is best for this country."

<snip>

Outright hostility to the Iraqi resistance now reaches far inside the antiwar movement, undermining the notion that Iraqis have the right to determine their own future, free of U.S. intervention.

This hostility was on display at the Washington, D.C., United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) national teach-in on March 24. During the discussion, audience member Jeff Skinner mildly suggested, "The antiwar movement should take up...Iraqis' right to resist the occupation." He added that his argument "is definitely not a glorification or a hope that American soldiers continue to die in Iraq," offering the parallel of the alliance between the Vietnamese resistance and U.S. troops as an example of the common interests between the two. Nevertheless, the panelists responded indignantly to Skinner's suggestion. Global justice activist Naomi Klein chastised, "We shouldn't get involved in offering blanket cheerleading for the resistance...There are dueling fundamentalists in Iraq...and are enemies of the Iraqi people."

<snip>

As author and activist Tariq Ali argued recently, "How could a resistance be pretty when the occupation is so brutal and ugly. The senseless violence inflicted upon the Iraqi people by the occupation results in a violent response." Ali also points out, "The left is weak in Iraq because the Iraqi Communist Party backed the occupation and served in the puppet government."

http://www.counterpunch.org/smith03312005.html

[PATRICK]

1. Violence is a trap

even in a "just war". To purposefully link peace with violence and in the bargain damage your own cause with one side or the other(especially the "home" team which you mainly are trying to effect) is the evil of stupidity. It was a big turnoff in the Vietnam anti-war movement. Apparently not even experience is a teacher anymore.

The fact is that you are rooting for an activist violent minority because the majority is not sure if or what to do to get rid of the Occupation. Most think and wish the Americans will just go away(and let the resistance help with the dirty work if only they didn't kill so many of their own people).

You can acknowledge that the Iraqis have a legitimate case to get rid of the occupation without critiquing the methodology of the outraged and desperate in all their factions. If you want to join them go ahead. Otherwise exactly whom are you going to impress and what movement to justice will result?

A peaceful resistance by the Shia has not been mobilized, a huge factor that would cripple the Occupation whatever the internal consequences to a liberate Iraq.

[chlamor]

2. I'm not sure

what you are saying as it is late and my brain is fading.

This I will say-Over 80% of Iraqis want the US troops out. Those are the Pentagons numbers. A sizeable majority from those who live in that house.

The greatest violence that is/has occurred is at the hands of US intervention. 15 years worth of warring/sanctions/devastation upon the people in Iraq. Millions dead.

"This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death: Martin Luther King: 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York