Hex writes:

"Multitude and Empire, Civil War Everywhere:
Towards a Communist Response"

Sphinx

"For months the leading weekly and daily papers of
the London press have been reiterating the same litany on the American Civil
War. While they insult the free states of the North, they anxiously defend
themselves against the suspicion of sympathising with the slave states of
the South. In fact, they continually write two articles: one article, in which
they attack the North, and another article, in which they excuse their attacks
on the North." — Karl Marx, "The North American Civil War"

Everyone seems to agree! The left, the neo-Nazis, the isolationists, bringing
war to Iraq was a farce and a scam, a power-mad dash for resources that’s
just a mask for the mass murder of Iraqis and the schemes of the Neo-Conservative
cabal. Amid the fire and brimstone of the invasion, the Iraqi people are getting
nowhere, and the occupiers are clearly the oppressors in the situation. While
few would actually claim affinity with the tyrannous Saddam Hussein, opposition
to the war and occupation are inherently legitimate because people
are dying. The Iraqi resistance is an imperfect but just response
to the Coalition’s rapacious greed for oil and never mind the former
Ba’ath parties and Islamic fascists behind the curtains, full speed
ahead! The Iraqi puppet state should be drowned in blood and the cosmopolitan
capitalism of the west should retreat from the desert; each and every glorious
beheading, the murders of collaborators and police, the assault on parasitic
contractors, each and every resistance to occupation becomes justice because
the people should rule Iraq, not the corporations.So go the shriekers, typing furiously into the internet, that infinite mirror
of the immediate. It is clear that people are dying, from military violence
as well as a ruined infrastructure, yet, it is also clear that it will not
be the people who will rule Iraq if the coalition pulls out
of the country. Indeed every indication to anyone following the situation
is that an internally conflicting and potentially cannibalistic array of nationalists,
former Ba’ath party members and Islamists will either dominate the new
Iraqi state or bring about its collapse. The “Iraqi resistance”
is founded largely on weapons reserves from the old, Ba'ath regime but most
importantly on Sheikh and cleric influence, direction and armament. It is
clear that the overwhelming trajectory of the “Iraqi resistance”,
not to mention its class nature, works for the clerics and sheikhs, two counter-powers
that emerged with the collapse of Saddam's unity fascism.[1] The Mahdi army
proved to be heroin-running thugs, who managed to set up autonomous Sharia
courts and murder communists before their glorious disarmament. Much of the
Sunni resistance is influenced by radical Islamists whose pet state would
come at the expense of both the Kurds and the Shi’a. None of these factions
looks promising for women or for minorities. So are these people the
people? Where indeed could 'rule by the people’ come from in war-torn
Iraq?

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