My respondent replies to the previous post:
[A. Roy] insists on simultaneously condemning the US and British state terrorism of war and occupation that leads to this violent Iraqi resistance. Condemning terrorism is not enough. One must also address its root causes.
My point is that some “root causes” always seem to get left out, like the fascist character of Baathism and the hatred and bigotry of Islamist ideology. To regard these as purely reactive is a mistake. I disagree with much of what C. Hitchens says, but he’s right to lampoon the notion that “they wouldn’t be this way if we weren’t so mean to them.”
Roy insists that the brutal US and British use of violence in Iraq inevitably breeds brutal terror.
Ah, that word, “inevitably.” A subtle way to deflect blame from the insurgents, who just blew up a bus in Baghdad today. NYT: “An enormous fireball engulfed the bus, killing most of its occupants and several people who had gathered around a nearby food stall.” Nothing inevitable about that. It was a conscious political decision on someone’s part, and it didn’t have a damned thing to do with “resistance.”
We are the ones who unleashed this violence by invading Iraq based on false premises. We can’t now simply ask it to go away, while we refuse to leave Iraq. It is quite naive to expect that under the circumstances of extremely violent US occupation, an Iraqi Gandhi is going to emerge and all violent resistance to the occupation will end. But this seems to be what you want, what you expect, and what you believe everyone should call for.
No, I expect the progressive left not to offer rhetorical support to what ought to be regarded as a fascist movement in Iraq. This is what A. Roy did with the words that touched off this exchange in the first place:
“The Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle against Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle…. Of course, it is riddled with opportunism, local rivalry, demagoguery, and criminality. But if we are only going to support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity.”
Now, I repeat, if she’s backing away from that reprehensible stance, as she appears to be, I give her credit. But let’s not act as though she never made the statement.
My guess is that Roy would say, confront the violence of your own country, the US, that you are responsible for, and force that violence to end, rather than spending your effort clamoring for Iraqi brutality to end, and issuing ringing condemnations of Iraqi violence.
Since Iraqi brutality is claiming thousands of Iraqi lives, we should indeed clamor for that brutality to end. As for me, I think it’s important not only to oppose U.S. aggression, but to confront the myopia (at best) of an antiwar movement that presumptuously expects my support. As a person of the left, I’m “responsible for” that movement as well. I’d argue that I’m even more “responsible for” that movement than I am for the actions of the U.S. military.
Recognize that your own country’s violence inevitably leads to the crazed violence you are seeing in Iraq. Risk your life using nonviolence to end your own government’s violence, rather than posting on a blog about how Iraqis should be risking their lives nonviolently resisting US occupation. Don’t preach to the Iraqis what you are not willing to practice yourself.
Again with “inevitably.” (And dear correspondent, be mindful that you are posting on a blog as well.)
I am not “preaching” to the Iraqis. I am lending my admittedly small and insubstantial voice to those Iraqis — the ones not already slaughtered by the “resistance” — who are trying to build a future for their country. The candidates and election workers, for instance, in constant danger of being shot in the street. To say to the insurgents, “How dare you murder these people”: this is “preaching”?
Iraqis do not need me to tell them to “risk their lives nonviolently.” They’re doing this every day. Merely to live in Baghdad is to risk one’s life, as today’s bus bombing shows yet again.
Unfortunately for all of us, successful nonviolent liberation movements have generally been the exception not the rule. But this is not primarily the fault of the occupied peoples, it is rather more the responsibility of occupiers who have generally attempted to repress all forms of resistance, violent and nonviolent.
But the insurgents in Iraq are themselves repressing any and all Iraqis who do not bow to their will. And rather than condemn this (oh no, how hypocritical that would be), the left buys into the notion that the “resistance” is the legitimate voice of the Iraqi people.
Nonviolent resistance is a wonderful thing. I wholeheartedly support it, work for it, and practice it, but I also recognize that under many circumstances it is hypocritical to condemn people for not practicing it, and unrealistic to expect most people to practice it.
Indeed, I don’t expect those fighting on behalf of Baathism or Talibanism to practice nonviolence.
This strikes me as more of the old “who can blame them” analysis. I don’t buy it, and I suspect the people maimed on today’s exploded bus don’t buy it either.
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