Why the Anti-War Movement Doesn't Embrace the Iraqi Resistance: A Response to Cockburn

By Phyllis Bennis, AlterNet. Posted July 31, 2007.

This is a response to criticism raised by Alexander Cockburn in his article in the July 30 issue of The Nation titled "Support Their Troops?" You can read Cockburn's piece here.

Alexander Cockburn (helped by Lawrence McGuire) makes three major points* in his "Support Their Troops?" column in The Nation. In my view one is right, one is wrong, one is preposterous, and linking the three of them only confuses the issue. His first point is that the U.S. peace movement doesn't embrace the Iraqi resistance. Right. The second is the U.S. peace movement is "pretty much dead." Wrong. And the third is that publicly sympathizing with the Iraqi resistance fighters will somehow create the still-missing "necessary critical mass to have a real movement."

Cockburn spends much of his article waxing eloquently - and rather nostalgically - about the days of earlier peace and solidarity movements, particularly Viet Nam and Central America. Although I seem to be his apparent poster girl for our movement's refusal to support the Iraqi resistance today, I share his nostalgia (I would have included the South African anti-apartheid movement as well). I was part of the side of the Viet Nam anti-war movement whose favorite chant was "One side's right, one side's wrong. We're on the side of the Viet Cong!" During the Central America years my part of the movement didn't only oppose U.S. intervention, we also supported the FMLN in El Salvador and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And throughout the anti-apartheid years, I supported the African National Congress.

But that was then. This is now. I have spent the last five years opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and before that, a dozen years opposing an earlier war and genocidal U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq). I spent - and still spend - weeks and months on the road, speaking at huge demonstrations and in tiny church basements, writing articles and talking points and whatever to help build and strengthen our movement. But I never supported Saddam Hussein, who was "resisting" the U.S. during the sanctions years, and I didn't -and don't--support what is called "the Iraqi resistance" today.

What's the difference? It's not only about what will expand our movement. In retrospect, our principled support for Vietnamese independence forces strengthened the broader "troops out now" movement's understanding of imperialism, but probably did little to increase the critical mass of the peace forces. We supported the NLF in Viet Nam, and later its Central American and South African counterparts out of principle, because we supported the social program they were fighting for. We may not have agreed with every position or every tactic, but we shared not only what they were fighting against - U.S.-backed dictatorships or U.S.-paid contra guerrillas or the devastation of apartheid - but what they were fighting for as well. Independence and socialism in Viet Nam, self-determination and social justice in Central America, a non-racial South Africa.

Unfortunately that's not the case with Iraq. Certainly the Iraqi people have the right to resist an illegal occupation, including military resistance. And certainly there are Iraqi people, organizations, movements that many of us do support. (The work of U.S. Labor Against the War in supporting the Iraqi oil workers unions is one of our best examples.) But as a whole, what is understood to be "the Iraqi resistance" against the U.S. occupation is a disaggregated and diverse set of largely unconnected factions, in which the various often-antagonistic armed movements (including some who attack Iraqi civilians as much as they do occupation troops) hold pride of place. There is no unified leadership that can speak for "the resistance," there is no NLF or ANC or FMLN that can claim real leadership and is accountable to the Iraqi population as a whole. There is no unified program, either of what the fight is against or what it is for. We know virtually nothing of what most of the factions stand for beyond opposition to the U.S. occupation - and from my own personal vantage point, of the little beyond that that we do know, I don't like so much. Real internationalism means making good on our own obligations to end the U.S. war and occupation, and recognizing the Iraqis' international law-sanctioned right to resist. Internationalism does not require us to embrace any particular resistance forces that happen to be in motion today regardless of what they may stand for.

That is why I believe our movement's strength is in focusing on the costs of war and occupation - the cost first to ordinary Iraqis, then to ordinary Americans, including American troops, as well as to the Arab world, the environment, international law, the UN, and others around the world. Are Iraqi resistance fighters also victims of that war? Yes they are - but recognizing that is not the same as "support." And I don't think we gain strength by making sympathy with resistance fighters a demand of our movement.

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Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. She is the author of "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy U.S. Power" (Interlink Publishing, October 2005).

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