Revelation on the road to Basra

This is a review of the seventh issue of New International magazine published by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP). This particular issue was originally published in 1991, and looks more like a book than a regular magazine. It's main piece is an article on the Gulf War, "Opening Guns of World War III", written by SWP national secretary Jack Barnes. Other articles deal with SWP's campaigns against the war, Communist tactics in war-time in general, and an article on the "Bring us home" movement among American GIs after World War II. There are also two documents on the Iran-Iraq war, written by the SWP's Iranian co-thinkers HKS.

Barnes has little trouble exposing the hypocrisy of both the Saddam regime and the U.S. administration of Bush senior. When Iraq suffered defeat in Kuwait at the hands of coalition forces, both the Kurds and the Shia Muslims rose in rebellion in an attempt to topple the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. The US, rather than aiding the Iraqi people in overthrowing Saddam, turned coat and remained passive as the Iraqi Republican Guard massacred the insurgents. From an American perspective, a weakened Saddam was better than a revolution. Besides, even if US-led coalition forces had taken Baghdad, the end result would probably have been another dictatorship, but a pro-American one this time. (This was in 1991, when the political situation was very different from today.) Barnes also points out that Iraq had been an unofficial US ally during the Iran-Iraq war, when the Western powers used Saddam's regime as a bulwark against Khomeini's Iran, at the time seen as more threatening.

But what was the SWP's alternative to the Gulf War? On this point, they are contradictory. On the one hand, the SWP demanded the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait. They also express their support for Kurdish self-determination and for the rebellion which Saddam's forces drowned in blood. However, they also call for the defence of Iraq against the US-led coalition. Barnes somehow believes that the "Iraqi workers and toilers" turned on Saddam because his regime refused to really fight the United States. That's hardly likely. Why would Kurds want to fight and die for Iraq? Or Shia Muslims, for that matter? Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a Stalinistic dictatorship dominated by the minority Sunni Arabs. Besides, Iraq is an artificial state anyway. The revolution against Saddam took place because the *defeat* of the Iraqi armed forces had weakened the repressive apparatus of the regime, and made it possible for the first time to actually organize massive resistance to it. Logically, the SWP should have called for "revolutionary defeatism" in Iraq from the start. But even as "defenders" of Iraq, the SWP are inconsistent - defence of Iraq started in Kuwait, yet the SWP demanded that Iraq leaves Kuwait, thereby removing the very cause of the war!

Naturally, the SWP claims that they defended Iraq despite Saddam Hussein's murderous regime. Perhaps. They did, after all, switch position and came out in support of the anti-Saddam revolution, once it actually got going. However, when Barnes is about to explain how "Communists" should act in a war situation, he points to two documents by the HVK. Apparently, the SWP leader wants to apply the same principles in Iraq as the HVK applied in Iran. However, it's obvious from HVK's bizarre documents, that this group actually supported the Khomeini regime in Iran. To use Trotskyite jargon, the HVK gave both "political" and "military" support to the essentially fascist regime of the mullahs. Hardly an example to emulate.

It's also unclear what kind of regime the SWP wants to have in Iraq in place of Saddam Hussein. They talk about a "workers' and farmers' government". Both Cuba and North Korea (!) are mentioned as positive examples. By implication, so is Iran, although that's apparently not a "workers' and farmers' government" sensu stricto. Well, perhaps the rebellious Shia Muslims could be won to a pro-Iranian perspective? I'm not sure if that would count for progress, however. As for Kim Il Sung being an alternative to Saddam Hussein...

New International (no. 7) may expose the rank hypocrisy and murderous Machiavellism of Saddam Hussein and George H. W. Bush, but it doesn't contain any trustworthy alternatives...