the left and iraq

those of you who persist in checking my blog, despite the dearth of new material over the past weeks/months, will be pleased to see a new post! the penultimate post before this absence was on a statement concerning solidarity with the workers of iraq and iran, and in which i made the assertion that the AWL's line on iraq was "muddled". since then, pete radcliff, a local AWL stalwart has left an extensive comment on the piece and, as you might guess, is none too pleased with my assessment. i thought i'd write an extensive piece here on some of my views regarding the issue, in the hope that a discussion can be generated on some of the very difficult matter of taking a stance on this hugely important issue.

pete's criticism seems to suggest that he thinks i'm a fan of the SWP(!) i guess he didn't read much else on my blog then. let's have a look at what he said:-

Stop the War, under the SWP leadership:
1) refused to condemn the mass murder of the 9/11 attack
2) refused to oppose Saddam Hussain
3) pushed the most discredited of parliamentary opponents of the war, George Galloway to the front of the anti-war movement.
We opposed all of this, as well as opposing the war and the occupation. Iraqi and Iranian socialist groupings did likewise.

oh yeah, did i mention that i think the SWP are shite? well, the SWP are shite, and reasons 2 and 3 listed by pete are clear examples of the kind of tyranny-appeasing politics that make me think that. their knee-jerk "anti-imperialism" is crude and misguided, as is the case with a lot of the 'old left'. refusing to condemn 9/11 is more complicated, in my opinion, and some highly principled people have spoken of the world trade center as a legitimate target for attacks on US imperialism (i'm thinking ward churchill and his ...justice of roosting chickens here). is condemnation of 9/11 just acquiescence in the face of the establishment's sanctification of 9/11, privileging the lives lost in new york above all the victims of capitalism? does it give heroic status to the "little eichmanns" who were among the victims of the attack (or, at the least, civilian status)? whilst there can be no doubt that it was a remarkably "scattergun" approach to attacking western economic power, it's a very difficult issue to tackle, and i don't think there's an easy option for anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists.

anyway, i've meandered backwards in time. i suppose your approach to 9/11, however, will determine how you might view some of the later "consequences" (i.e. the invasions of afghanistan and iraq). i started by making it clear that much of the AWL's position is reasonable:-

I should also make it clear that I am sympathetic to a lot of the AWL's points on opposition to the Iraq war. The emphasis on solidarity with the Iraqi working class, support of secularism, and refusal to side with "the resistance" as though its members are all heroic freedom fighters are all necessary and sensible.

however

...to see the resistance as either black or white is false. Whilst there are undoubtedly strong religious and Ba'athist elements who should be opposed, I would wager that the majority of people involved in resistance to the occupation are simply those who wish to oppose the occupation and terrorisation of their country. Does the AWL support them? ...
For me, solidarity should be with the grassroots, not with unions acting as intermediaries between the people and the government.

then there's the question of withdrawal of occupying forces:-

I'm also not a fan of the AWL's unwillingness to end the occupation by getting troops out. They simply shouldn't be there. They are also contributing to the vast majority of civilian casualties in Iraq if Les Roberts' Lancet survey is to believed (and I would suggest it is). Whilst it might be conceived that the withdrawal of US/UK troops would be a terrible thing for those opposing the religious fundamentalists who wish to take power, I would suggest that keeping the troops there is worse. Having western troops on the ground makes western control of Iraq inevitable - something that is not at all in Iraqis' interests. It fuels the fantasies of those who would love to see this as a crusade against Islam, and continues the cycle of aggression and counter-aggression that harms civilians more than anything else. This in turn gives the occupiers carte blanche to carry on bombings, torture, invasions of people's homes, and all of the other ongoing crimes of the occupation. How this situation can be good for working class Iraqis is beyond me. It appears that the AWL line has followed the same line of thought of many liberal commentators, that a republic is better for Iraqis than religious tyranny. Well that's fine, if you accept that view of the situation. I don't personally believe that the US blueprint for Iraq is good for Iraqis and I don't see that religious tyranny is necessarily the only alternative. In which case, isn't it rather dangerous to be viewing the invading imperialists as the defenders of Iraq? This plays directly into the hands of those who seek to impose western domination on Iraq.

i'm also very suspicious of the line the AWL seems to be taking on muslims. firstly, they appear to be portraying all interpretations of islam (and, consequently, all muslims) as equally tyrannical and archaic, and have made the deeply misguided decision of republishing the danish cartoons in their paper, solidarity. as one old friend from the peace movement put it recently, they've aligned themselves with the BNP on this one:-

Whilst I am no fan of organised religion, I do believe in freedom of belief within a secular society, and recognise that Muslims are a hugely diverse group of people who cannot simply be lumped into the box of 'things we can attack'. Given the current low status of Muslims in our society, joining with the liberal elite in attacking them is something I cannot support. They are a rather too convenient scapegoat for all kinds of imagined crimes, not dissimilar to those heaped on other religious and ethnic groups throughout history. I am not going to make them my scapegoat.

that just about wraps up my summary of why i think the AWL's approach to iraq is muddled. perhaps i'm misinterpreting their politics, or perhaps i'm just wrong about certain things. i'd be interested to know, dear readers, what you think. the best way of seeing the inadequacies of one's own theorisations and positions is always through criticism by others, so let's discuss.