After George W. Bush invaded Iraq, the left followed the war with keen interest hoping against hope that the American military would be sent packing in the same fashion as Vietnam thirty years earlier. Even though there was little evidence of socialist ideology among the Sunni or the Shiite militias who fought the Americans more sporadically, the consensus was that they deserved our support.
Like some of the key battles in Vietnam such as the Tet Offensive of 1968, the battle for Fallujah became a turning point in the war. Writing for CounterPunch on November 13, 2004 Mike Whitney professed his admiration for the “mujahideen” quoting a Pepe Escobar article to the same effect. Both men were ready to hoist the fighters on their shoulders and Whitney went so far as to regard them as students of Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara: "Former or retired Iraqi army officials have always been serious students of Viet Minh tactics and Che Guevara’s theory of the guerrilla foco (center of guerrilla operations). Now they are applying this to urban warfare." Now, 11 years later, very few people would take up the cause of mujahideen, which is the Arabic word for “any person performing Jihad”. Even less so if the men carrying it out were retired Iraqi army officers who appear to be exactly those who are running ISIS’s military operations today. Apparently, when an armed struggle is being waged against Washington, it makes little difference if the ideology is Salafist or Marxist but when Bashar al-Assad is targeted, all bets are off. Ipso facto, shooting at Baathist soldiers makes you a fascist. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/11/16/understanding-the-rise-of-isis/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
