Press Action ::: Double Blackmail and the Iraqi Resistance

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Double Blackmail and the Iraqi Resistance

By Jordy Cummings

To begin, a note to readers. I am on record as offering support for the Iraqi resistance, based on the abstract, universal principle of resistance to occupation. As can be seen from the piece I wrote on the topic, I also have tremendous moral issues with many of the tactics and more Zarqawi-influenced elements of the Iraqi resistance. Furthermore, I believe that it would be an immense tactical error for an antiwar movement that can and should achieve broad popular support on the single issue (which provided the most successful demos and campaigns in the Vietnam era) of bringing the troops home, ending the occupation(s) and perhaps most importantly, attempting to use international law mechanisms, to if not prosecute the criminals in Washington, to declare null and void the issue of Western—and American—first dibs on Iraqi oil.

There is a tremendous debate raging among antiwar activists regarding this issue—best presented here. Foursquare, I take the side of Gilbert Achchar, someone who has been around the block a few times and, from my own reading is far more of an expert on Middle Eastern politics, than his antagonist Alex Callinicos. One may in turn take Callinicos’s position, considering, how, in the final analysis it is only tactically, not morally different, from Achcar, if far less substantive. I find Callinicos’ dismissal of concern about specific elements of Iraqi resistance, even supposed “collaborators” such as Iraqi communist Hadi Saleh, recently murdered in Iraq, his reference to him as a “collaborator” as well as a “communist—something that almost sounds red-baiting—quite offensive.

As Achcar points out, the Algerians and Vietnamese had to make some concessions to Imperial power in order to kick out the occupiers. A union organizer, be he communist or otherwise, has a responsibility to the Iraqi working class to represent their interests with whomever is boss, Imperial or otherwise. To call Saleh a collaborator would be like labeling a communist labor organizer who negotiates with (name your corporation) for better wages (all the while planning future efforts) as a collaborator in the capitalist system.

Now one can label cold war labor types as collaborators, to be sure, but I very much doubt that, regardless of its pragmatic choice (with Sadr and other groups) to work with the Iraqi Governing Council that Saleh’s Iraqi Communist Party are in any ways collaborators. In fact, one can easily turn the tables and state that the communists dual power, both celebrating the demise of Saddam (remember all the red flags in the Baghdad street?—How about an indigenist interpretation of such deeds?) and working through unions as well as popular violent and nonviolent movements against the occupation—seems to me (and I could be wrong) the most effective means to create not just an occupation free Iraq, but a just, secular, even socialist Iraq.

If Callinicos and his ilk disagree with this standpoint, this should be expressed in a manner of comradeship, which Callinicos, as well as fellow “international socialist” Sharon Smith at Counterpunch seem to be labeling those who disagree with their unqualified, no-questions asked attitudes as, in Callinicos’ words “close to Tony Blair,” or in Smith’s even more authoritarian language, phrases like “must” as opposed to “should,” use of selective weak arguments (of “New Left Veteran Stevie Weisman” as opposed to Achcar’s or Phyllis Bennis’s reasonable position) to buttress her point that among those of us who think that nothing in life, except class struggle itself, is black and white, our arguments must be weak. In fact, while coming from an organization that calls itself Marxist, her attitude seems to be the opposite of dialectical materialism, replacing it with a vague “Third Worldist” myopia that takes purity of position over factual analysis, in Lenin’s phrase “infantile fantasies” over looking at how someone with a similar belief system to herself would act in such a situation. The left in Palestine, for example, has not been overtly critical, nor should it be, of the militant groups. However, they correctly state that much of the militant groups’ activities are counterproductive. Likewise, the left in Iraq or in the United States or Papua New Guinea, would have their hands in many pots, not limiting themselves to fractious, and often score-settling murders and kidnappings, instead, being involved both in what one presumes are the more secular elements of resistance forces, as well as being involved in the day-to-day arrangements of building local councils, unions and secret societies.

I am in fulsome agreement with Arundhati Roy when she states that “Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allied governments to withdraw from Iraq.” I guess I take a different, more nuanced argument from the brilliant and careful phrasing of Roy. Unlike Smith, who also uses this quote to buttress her arguments, I believe this means simply that we need to “force the US..to withdraw from Iraq,” along with phrases designed to reassure readers and listeners that they are right when they think of the Iraqi resistance as not pristine.

Therefore, there is nothing in Roy’s statement that indicates, that as a movement, the antiwar movement must offer unqualified support to all aspects of the Iraqi resistance. Callinicos understands this much, but Smith feels that it is not “pure” enough, in my understanding, to simply back resistance for abstract reasons. No, Smith is asking me, and thus a movement, many of whom are wavering (a movement depends on numbers) to solidarize not just with the defenders of cities, but with kidnappers and assassins. I agree with Phyllis Bennis, who again, commands more respect for her knowledge than Smith, that “We should not call for ‘supporting the resistance’ because we don’t know who most of them are and what they really stand for, and because of those we do know, we mostly don’t support their social program beyond opposition to the occupation.”

To not use the movement to call for “supporting the resistance” does not mean that those of us who must acknowledge that we are more open-minded and radical, perhaps than the bulk of the people with whom we want to radicalize, cannot still, in our own ways, in written efforts, separate para-demonstrations and the like, to make the case for (hopefully not the entire) resistance. But even as a supporter of the resistance, qualified, I don’t believe that a movement can survive if it demands such purity of its adherents. I realize that many people, including myself to an extent, want to build a party, vanguard or otherwise. But as Achcar points out, the most successful antiwar movements have always been “single issue.” In Marxist parlance, yes, it’s OK to reach out for bourgeois support, or is “expanding the contradictions” as I’ve heard some vulgar (i.e. misunderstanding of Karl) Marxists refer to their attitude, more important than saving Iraqi—and other lives.

Stepping back to the issue of the assassinated Red Saleh for a moment, so I can make myself clear, to mention again that I am open to other interpretations of Saleh’s situation than my own—Asad Abu Khalil’s views on the case are worth reading as a more nuanced argument about “collaborators,” without the rudeness that should be foreign to an antiwar movement. Callinicos contends that for the left, for Achcar to criticize elements of the resistance plays into the hands of the Hitchens/liberal bomber types who love to portray the antiwar movement as apologetic for terrorism and indifferent to the Iraqi left. In fact, I think the opposite is the case—to automatically label, from Britain or the United States, Salah, both communist parties and other forces involved in the elections as quislings or some such enables the anti-antiwar liberal bombers to portray the antiwar movement as unconcerned with the left in Iraq, something that a movement, or at least a left wing antiwar movement, should take into account. This is not a situation as in Vietnam, when the left was America’s enemy. An indigenist interpretation here would allow for the concept of holding the Imperialists to their word. The elections themselves, flawed as they are, would not be happening if not for the popular uprisings of Sadr as well as communists and even the Chalabi forces.

This is not being on the same page as “Tony Blair,” or the even more anti-labor Bush, who, as many labor reporters including David Bacon, including those who worked with Saleh and the ICFI, that Allawi is enforcing, if not making even more anti-labor, Hussein’s labor practices. Again, at worst Saleh is John Sweeney or some such, someone who works in unions for a living, and is perhaps unconcerned with workers. Nothing indicates that this is the case, but even if were, there is big difference between him and real collaborators, like Allawi and his Mukhbarat, who, as is well known, give all labor activists a hard time.

The real issue, however, as noted, that I take with Smith and Callinicos’ position, is their authoritarianism, which if translated from language to action, may splinter the antiwar movement into contending camps, thus performing exactly what Bush wants. After stating that the antiwar movement “must,” not “should” (big difference), unconditionally (as in, without free thought as to which fractions we do and don’t back) support the armed resistance in Iraq, she supplies one of the great syllogisms of all time: “Is this strategy too ambitious—too far to the left for “mainstream” America? That is unlikely, since a majority of Americans continue to oppose the war.”

First of all, there is nothing intrinsically “left” or “right” about supporting any political movement, if one takes the terms to mean anti-capitalist or pro-capitalist, as opposed to meaning “as out there as possible” being left. The majority of Americans who oppose the war, many of whom correctly (even Noam Chomsky recommends people read a study on Al Qaida by Jason Burke) feel threatened by what they think of as “terrorism,” in other words fundamentalist and other violence against the United States proper as well as other regions, that may well have legitimate grievances, much as the bombers of Dresden had legitimate grievances, but are residents of the US, and thus want to feel safe.

Any perceived link with “terrorists” who clearly, in the case of Zarqawi and Al Qaida, are operating in Iraq (against the wishes of much of the resistance, particularly among Shia) will turn off many of these people. Now if this was building a revolutionary movement to overthrow American power, something premature to say the least, it would be all well and good to purge elements that have not attained a proper level of consciousness. Yet, the antiwar movement, particularly in the United States, needs numbers. To increase in numbers does not mean to criticize the resistance—criticizing them would also be counterproductive—but it means, in my opinion, to take the advice of Bennis and Achchar, not sectarians, however convincing they may be.

Slavoj Zizek, as I’ve written, refers to situations such as these as double blackmail, a phrase he coined, as an opponent of American policy in the Balkans, but also an opponent of Milosevic. The attitudes of the guardians of the public mind are to discredit opposition to war. The attitudes of the sectarian vanguard wanna-bes is that one should, like Israelis outside of Israel in regard to Sharon, mute criticism and not think freely. It is against this double blackmail that a more anti-authoritarian anti-war movement must build.

Jordy Cummings, editor of Pure Polemics, lives in Toronto and can be reached at yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca.

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