Letters

Reactionary peace

The following letter by Dragan Plavsic recently appeared in Socialist Worker:

?One argument I have heard in the anti-war movement is that we should also oppose fundamentalism and terrorism by raising slogans against them together with the slogan, ?Stop the war?. I think this is wrong because it confuses and dilutes what must be our real message. Our enemy is here at home - US and UK imperialism, whose contempt for the oppressed in the Middle East lies at the root of this war.

?We should not forget that the US is a world power with the capacity to cause death on a world scale. The loss of life in the World Trade Center was terrible, but the US slaughtered 100,000 Iraqis in the Gulf War and 500,000 children since with sanctions.

?This is why the critical issue for us in the west is, are you against the war? The great strength of the growing anti-war movement is its focus on building a broad anti-imperialist coalition under the clear, unifying slogan of ?Stop the war?. Our message must be clear. Our rulers want war - we want peace. That is the only basis upon which a genuinely anti-imperialist movement can be built? (November 3).

This short letter perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong with the SWP?s approach to the war. Rather than trying to bring revolutionary politics to the growing anti-war movement - like the perspective of turning the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war - the SWP comrades instead want to deliver it up to the forces of liberalistic/legalistic pacifism and reactionary islamicism. If all we want is ?peace? - ie, just to stop the war - then it does indeed make logical sense to court, if not cuddle up to, islamic fundamentalists. You can be pretty sure that Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan are also against the war and are for ?peace? ? and god help all those who would become victims of their peace.

Leninists are for class war and revolution, not the peace of the oppressors - whether they be George Bush, Tony Blair, bin Laden or Mohammed Omar.

Reactionary peace
Reactionary peace

Church against war

All Hallows Church in Hyde Park, Leeds agreed at a congregational meeting on Sunday October 28 to affiliate to the Leeds Stop the War Coalition and to support the November 18 demonstration against the war in London. They agreed to cancel their main Sunday service that day in order to encourage church members to attend the demonstration and agreed to hold a communion service at the start of the demonstration in London.

The congregation also agreed to work individually and as a community to dispel anti-islamic feeling in the wider society and to seek positive solutions to the current situation by educating themselves about the wisdom of the islamic faith and also about the current world situation. From November 7 every Wednesday evening All Hallows will hold prayers for peace and justice at 7.30pm, followed by an educational with an invited speaker.

It is our duty as people of faith to stand in solidarity with our muslim brothers and sisters against rising islamophobia and also to stand against the atmosphere of revenge that surrounds the current US-initiated bombing campaign in Afghanistan. We condemn wholeheartedly the atrocity of September 11, but we also condemn the bombing of an innocent people in a country verging on famine and decimated by 20 years of war and superpower hypocrisy. War is not the answer.

We are making a stand against the war by joining the Stop the War coalition, but we are also committing ourselves as a community to explore alternative possibilities through our educational programme on the current situation. We welcome participation in these events by all people of goodwill, of any faith or none.

Church against war
Church against war

Drugs

Jim Gilbert, are you serious? To use drugs is up to the individual? And society should pick up the pieces if anyone needs help? You are dragging the name of communism in the dirt. If you think that people using heroin are going to change society, you need help.

Socialism is about creating a human society, not a hell hole on earth. I know: my cousin has been using drugs and is absolutely fucked up in his head.

With hopes of a rethink.

Drugs
Drugs

Afghanistan problem

I must set the record straight about your report, Third camp: our war aims?, and what I was supposed to have said at the meeting in question (Weekly Worker October 25).

I argued quite clearly that the Gulf War over Kuwait was an imperialist war between Anglo-US imperialism and the Iraqi capitalist ruling class. The Revolutionary Democratic Group stood for the defeat of both sides. Whichever side lost the war would create the circumstances for democratic revolution. This is exactly what happened. Popular revolution swept across Kurdistan and southern Iraq. Bush halted the war in order to save the defeated Saddam Hussein from popular democratic revolution.

Some British groups like the Socialist Workers Party and Workers Power supported Iraq. The RDG argued that in the name of ?anti-imperialism? they were supporting the Iraqi capitalists. It was a classic popular front. With the current war, we might easily slip into the same position: ?defeat for both sides? versus ?support for one side?. Delete Saddam Hussein and substitute Taliban and fight the same war again. That is basically what is happening, with the SWP and Workers Power on one side and the Alliance for Workers? Liberty, CPGB and RDG taking the other.

I then suggested that the situation was more complex than simply an auto-repeat of the Gulf War line. For one thing Afghanistan was divided internally and civil war was already going on between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. I made the analogy of a war between the BNP controlling the south and the NF in the north. Now US imperialism was backing the NF didn?t mean that we should! This may not be a perfect analogy, but it does not mean that I have illusions in the Taliban or the Northern Alliance. But simply being anti-Taliban might imply we supported or were sympathetic to the Northern Alliance.

The question for communists on the ground is surely how the democratic movement within Afghanistan, to the extent that there is one, can develop correct tactics to exploit these contradictions for the advance of secularism, democracy and self-determination for the Afghan people.

I didn?t claim to have the answer to the problem. However, I did say that Pakistan was the key to the situation. There was a possibility of democratic revolution to overthrow the Pakistan military government. This would be a major blow to British-US imperialism. According to your report I am supposed to have speculated ?whether we should support the Musharaf military regime or the islamic opposition?. That is complete bollocks. I ?wondered? nothing of the kind.

What I said was that the crisis was an opportunity for the overthrow of the regime. The source of democratic revolution is the mass anti-war movement on the streets. We shouldn?t suggest that the only anti-war forces were islamic fundamentalists. There is a mass working class movement, which must seize the opportunity to overthrow the regime. The implication of this was a united front between the working class socialist movement and the islamic opposition. This does not mean having illusions in religion.

If anything, the closest analogy I can think of is the Iranian democratic revolution in 1979. The working class and islamic movement overthrew the shah. We know the great victory for democracy that was. We know the reactionary outcome it had. But the eventual victory of the Iranian islamicists was not predetermined. No doubt if the Bolsheviks had been in Iran the outcome would have been very different.

The recent and unprecedented murder of Pakistan?s christians is surely a sign of how desperate the military government is. That looks like a classic counterrevolutionary pogrom-type manoeuvre. It was the kind of thing the tsarist secret police did when feeling threatened by a popular movement. It is not inconceivable that the Musharaf secret police organised those murders in order to blame and divide the anti-war movement. The murders will certainly strengthen the regime by spreading fear as to what would happen if the regime was overthrown.

Afghanistan problem
Afghanistan problem