Question Everything

Killed in Iraq.

Where Do We Go From Here?
The Anti-War Movement and the Occupation of Iraq
by Stephen R. Shalom

Those who were united a year ago in opposition to the war on Iraq find themselves divided on where we should go from here. Some suggest that despite our opposition to the launching of the war, today we need to support the occupation. Others urge us to support the resistance. In the questions and answers below I will try to address the concerns coming from both directions.

A good Q&A piece on the war & occupation in Iraq. Recommended to those who support the occupation.

Much of the left never had principled anti-imperialist politics. Most leftists are authoritarian and think we need a "daddy state" to boss us all around. It's not a big jump to apply that same idea on an international level. Prior to 1917 support for classical imperialism was widespread among Marxist circles. Marx supported British colonialism in India & Engels backed the US in the Mexican-American war. After 1917 anti-imperialist rhetoric became common among Marxists (because of Lenin - who was among those Marxists who were against imperialism) but it remained mere rhetoric. Leninist states engaged in their own imperialism in Eastern Europe & Elsewhere. Many Liberals supported classical imperialism. America's "wer'e conquering you to bring you freedom & democracy" crap was started mainly by Woodrow Wilson. Liberals also brought us the Vietnam war.

Market Capitalist states are responsible for a far larger amount of deaths than Marxist states in the same time time period. The classical fascist states alone killed around 50 million, including the holocaust & world war. Ten million people have died in Russia as a result of the free market reforms. That's about as many as Stalin killed but, surprise, surprise, the capitalists don't say anything when they're the ones doing the killing. Plus there's the Indochina wars, Belgium's atrocities in the Congo, the first world war, a zillion US-backed neo-fascist states, the Suharto coup + East Timor, genocidal sanctions against Iraq, Rwanda, Turkish Kurdistan, the Armenian genocide, and a bunch more.

King Leopold of Belgium murdered 10 million people in Congo, it was the first genocide of the 20th century. That's around the same number Stalin killed and substantially higher than Pol Pot. In terms of large-scale massacres Suharto killed more than Pol Pot. The coup in which he came to power killed between 500,000 - 1 million people, plus there's his later genocides. LBJ killed more people than Pol Pot. He was one of the main drivers behind the invasion of Vietnam (killing around 3 million), invaded the Dominican Republic, engineered Suharto's coup, backed the Fascist Coup in Brazil and backed numerous other neo-fascist states.

The so-called "cease fire" in Fallujah is a farce. It lasted an hour and a half before the US broke it and began shooting & bombing again. The US is targetting civilians, shooting at ambulances, assasinating unarmed men in the back and generally massacring the population. American media is largely ignoring or downplaying this massacre, in sharp contrast to it's portrayal of the killing of 4 American "civilian contractors" in the same city a few weeks ago. Those so-called "civilian contractors" were actually private mercenaries working for Blackwater USA, assisting US forces in controlling Iraq. They were therefore a military target, not civilians.

Bin Laden's (alleged) offer of a truce with Europe was spurned by Western leaders as "unthinkable." Twenty years ago the west was allied with these same people. Not only was a truce "thinkable" - a full fledged alliance was put in place! When Bin Laden & company were fighting against the Soviets they were "freedom fighters" and great allies against "evil," but now that the sides have changed they are instead portrayed as irrational fanatic terrorists who cannot be reasoned with. If the west could make an alliance with them in the '80s then surely negotiating a peace with them in the 21st century is within the bounds of the thinkable.

Iranian media is reporting that the US is planting Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

Moveon.org was originally founded by wealthy democrats to defend Clinton from impeachment. Their position was that congress should censure Clinton and then "move on." Apparently, they think lying us into war is equal to lying about your sex life.

The rise of the Khmer Rouge to power was preceded by a CIA coup against the Cambodian government and a masssive US assault on Cambodia. US bombing of Cambodia killed at least several hundred thousand people. Apologists for right-wing genocide say nothing about this US-sponsored genocide prior to Pol Pot. It was this US assault which lead to the rise of the Khmer Rouge as it fought against the US-backed dictatorship. Prior to the CIA coup the Khmer Rouge were a minor party but they gained much more popularity after it.

Eventually the Khmer Rouge took power and committed the genocide rightists like to harp on. At the same time Indonesia invaded and conquered East Timor, murdering between one-forth and one-third of the population. This was done with US support & funding. As atrocities increased against the East Timorese US funding also increased to insure that Indonesia wouldn't run out of weapons to exterminate them with. Coverage in US media (which largely consisted of regurgitation of state department & indonesian lies) declined as atrocities increased. When they reached their highest point coverage dropped to zero. This happened at the same time as Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia, which the media & capitalists were giving lots of attention to while ignoring the US-backed genocide in East Timor.

The Khmer Rouge were kicked out of power by a Vietnamese invasion, which ended the genocide. That's right, those other totalitarian lefties are the ones who put a stop to Pol Pot's genocide. The US's response was to support Pol Pot's guerilla war against Vietnam. The US assisted Pol Pot's attempt to get back in power, which failed, fortunetly.

Of course, capitalists only talk about the period from 1975-1979, when Cambodia's genocide wasn't supported by the US. They prefer to ignore the preceding US-sponsored genocide in Cambodia, the US-sponsored genocide in East Timor at the same time (which as a percentage of population was actually worse than Pol Pot) and the US's subsequent support for Pol Pot after the Vietnamese threw them out of power.

During the Spanish Revolution many of the owners of small businesses were better off after they were collectivized. If the majority of workers in any business, large or small, decide to collectivize it then they are free to do so. They stop obeying the boss and instead run it themselves. The former owners & bosses have the option of becoming workers in the new collective, equal to everyone else. There is no violence involved in this. There is only violence if the owners attempt to use force to prevent collectivization (such as by having police "protect" his "property"), in which case the workers have the right to defend themselves. Of course, if the business is so small that there are no employees (the owner is also the worker) then the owner can keep right on working by himself. S/he'd probably be better off joining a commune, but if s/he doesn't want to they don't have too.

One, two, many Iraqs

Why Were The Native Americans Unable to Sucessfully Defend Themselves from European Aggression?
Disease probably played a greater role than anything in killing the natives off. Plus they were far too trusting of the Europeans. If, instead of often attempting to maintain friendly relations, they formed a broad coalition against the Europeans and eliminated every European who left his hemisphere they may have been able to repell the invaders even without the European's technology of death.

Europeans didn't come to the "New World" to escape tyranny, they came here to conquer. There were some revolutionary movements and some had similarities to anarchism at that time period, but none called themselves anarchists because this predated anarchism in the modern sense. See The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History Of The Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker.

The Spanish Communist Party sabotaged the Spanish Revolution. The Fascist coup in July 1936 was defeated because of the anarchists, with the assistance of rank & file members from the left-wing of the socialist party. The CNT, an anarcho-syndicalist union, called a general strike to fight against the fascist coup. The left-wing socialists tried to get the government to release weapons to the workers so they could fight against Franco's coup but the government refused. So the anarchists broke into the barracks and distributed arms to the people. After they did this the government decided to give weapons to the people. The anarchists, with help from the left-wing socialists, defeated the coup in 2/3rds of Spain, begining the civil war. In the anti-fascist areas an anarchist revolution began, anarchist collectives were formed and the state was smashed. It's military was in rebellion and police forces had disintigrated during the fighting. The anarchists made the mistake of allying with statist groups including the Spanish Communist party, which was very small at the start of the civil war. The Spanish Communist party, following orders from the USSR, decided to attempt to impose it's own dictatorship on Spain. They became the leading counter-revolutionary group in "Republican" Spain, denouncing the collectives and calling for the protection of private property. Starting in 1937 the Communist party began consolidating it's dictatorship and suppressing the revolution. They used troops, some of which were taken away from the front, to forcibly destoy the collectives and restor private property in some cases, state property in others. They eventually suppressed all opposition groups starting with POUM (Party of Marxist Unity - anti-Stalin Leninists) and continuing against the anarchists and other groups. Opponets of the party were put in jail and/or shot, their newspapers censored and organizations harrassed and/or outlawed. The Communists weren't primarily trying to save democracy from fascism, they were trying to impose their own dictatorship - a dictatorship as bad as what Franco put into place after the commies lost the civil war (due partly to their suppression of opposing groups & destrution of the collectives). This has been proved by the opening of the soviet archives, which conclusive demonstrate that the Communists weren't out to "defend democracy" or the working class revolution which broke out, but to impose a one-party dictatorship.

Fascism and Marxist-Leninism (Red Fascism) aren't that different. Leninist states put millions of people in prison, murder millions and suppress all opposition, including other revolutionaries like anarchists. See "The Guillotine at Work" by GP Maximoff Hitler called himself a national socialist, nationalized many industries and implemented 3-year plans. Remember Stalin's 5-year plans? Hitler's were like that, but only 3-years instead of five. Most fascist states implement some degree of central planning.

The USSR fought WW2 out of it's own self-interest, not out of some benevolent anti-fascism. It didn't enter WW2 until the Nazis attacked them, after first signing the Hitler-Stalin pact. The Communist Party USA (correctly) denounced WW2 as "the second imperialist war" until the USSR invaded, then it became a "people's war against fascism." Just becase Red Fascism goes to war against Brown Fascism doesn't change the fact that it's fascism. Stalin's regime wasn't any better than Mussolini, Franco, etc. Anarchists also fought against fascism in WW2, including in partisan units, the French resistance and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Anarchist partisans in East Europe were put in the gulag and/or killed after the Leninists took over.

Bolsheviks like to use the same kind of nonsense used by Bush & co. - if you don't support us you support Bin Laden & the terrorists! Authoritarian socialists do the same thing - if you don't support our dictatorship you must support imperialism & the US! It's the same crap used by the McCarthyists. "If your'e not with us your'e with the evil enemy." Reality isn't so binary. Of course US imperialism is bad, so is Soviet (and British, French, etc.) imperialsim. But that doesn't translate into support for any of the states/ruling classes who happen to be victimized by imperialist powers, some of which are quite brutal in their own right. All should be overthrown in favor of libertarian communism. In Cuba anarchists are shot and jailed, why should we support a regime that suppresses anarchists and independant worker organization? Cuba is state-capitalist, not socialist. Castro is not a revolutionary, he is a counter-revolutionary. He just took advantage of a revolution against Bastita to install himself as a new dictator. He didn't even claim to be a Marxist-Leninist before seizing power. He even negotiated with the US to become the US's new puppet government after coming to power, but negotiations broke down so he decided to make Cuba the whore of the USSR (another state-capitalist society). This is the same kind of crap the US uses to suppress dissent. Anyone who opposes the regime is demonized as a supporter of the official enemy ("terrorist" "communist" etc.). The Leninists do the same thing, demonizing all dissidents as "state deparment lackeys" or "counter-revolutionaries" or "Kulaks" etc. It's is a standard technique of those opposed to the self-liberation of the workers.

What existed in Eastern Europe was just a different form of capitalism, state monopoly capitalism. It stratified society between the haves and the have nots just like what we have now. On the top were the party members, with the central committee and politburo being the tip top, and on the bottom were the workers. And just like what we have now, it was possible to move between different hierarchies (although it didn't happen much). In the USSR there were people who managed to go from construction worker to joining the Politburo. Everybody had to obey the orders of the politburo. This is a hierarchy, and thus the very opposite of anarchy.

Cuba was one of America's first client state, and is very close to the US. So the US power elite would certainly like to take it over again. And there are also idiots on the left who try to portray it as something other than a brutal dictatorship. For some reason Cuban propaganda has been more effective in creating foreign followers than most other surviving Leninist states. The general thrust of American activism with regard to Cuba should be to oppose US Imperialism against it, but this should be done in the knowledge that it is a BRUTAL DICTATORSHIP, just like many other victims of American Imperialism (Iraq, Yugoslavia, etc.).

If you trace the emergence of the idea of the state 'withering away' in Marx & Engels thought to find it emerging as a responce to anarchist criticisms. The Communist Manifesto didn't say the state withers away, it said "the public power loses it's political characteristics." In their vision after the stae 'withered away' society would still be highly centralized and what we call a 'state' would still exist. They do not call this a state because they define a state as the use of violence by one class to suppress other classes. Since there are no classes there can be no state. But in reality society would still be highly centralized with all the characteristics of what we call the state. The state only "withers away" if you accept their specific definition of the state. See this article (in pdf format), it explains all this and has the evidence to back it up.

Down With the International Socialist Organization (ISO)

See infoshop's page on the ISO. There's lots of good criticisms there. As many former ISO members have reported, the ISO is basically a cult. The ISO also have a long history of attempting to take over other people's groups and subordinate them to the ISO. A recent well-known example of this was their attempt to take over the student anti-war movement (which failed, fortunetly). It is not healthy to work with the ISO or most Leninists. Non-Leninist Marxists can be okay, but Leninists are supporters of brutal dictators (like Lenin) and their organizations are usually cults that subordinate everyone to a few leaders.

"In Defense of October" by John Rees, of the same tendency, is full of lies and misquotes historians in extremely dishonest ways. See refutations of it here and here.

Leninists aren't really socialists but are actually left-wing fascists. They defend brutal dictatorships (like Russia under Lenin) that suppressed all opposition. If the ISO ever came to power they would shoot most of the people on this list, just as Leninists have done in every revolution. George Bush talks about freedom and democracy too, but just like the Leninists he doesn't implement it in power. What matters is their record, not their manifesto.

Are You Really Surprised?

So, a mob of Iraqis torch, beat, mutilate and hang corpses belonging to four American defense contractors on the same day that five U.S. soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing. U.S. media was shocked and awed. Despicable, horrible, horrifying. While the killings are indeed gruesome and God help the families of those killed, I would like to ask what on Earth do you expect? These are people who suffered under 13 years of sanctions, constant and consistent bombing throughout the 1990s and persistent random trigger-happy killing of civilians by U.S. troops in the last year. Depleted uranium is destroying children and the future of Iraq. Joblessness, power outages, lack of communications -- no phones in 80 percent of the country -- and lawlessness. You want candy and flowers?

A good piece by Firas Al-Atraqchi on the recent killings of 4 American private mercenaries in Iraq.