I wrote this polemic as part of an ongoing discussion about the attitude of revolutionaries toward imperialism and toward the military conflicts that have arisen out of the "Arab Spring." It's crossposted from Kasama, "A Reply to Pham Binh and Clay Claiborne: Imperialism in a Bell Jar?" It's a response to an article by Claiborne and Binh on an episode late in World War 2 where the revolutionary anti-colonialists of the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap briefly cooperated with the OSS, the predecessor of the American CIA. I've discussed many of these themes before but they remain central.
Ever since they decided to back US/NATO intervention in Libya (and
later to argue for the US to arm or otherwise support the rebel forces
in Syria),
Clay Claiborne, Pham Binh and other folks associated with the
North Star trend like Louis Proyect, have been repeatedly touting this
story of US-Viet Minh cooperation.
They fall back on this story as though it's some kind of stunning
death-ray evidence that annihilates any argument against their position.
They argue that it bolsters their case, somehow transforming their
support of their own imperialist power into an act of revolutionary
internationalism.
There are many problems with the attempt to
enlist this historical episode as an argument for their position. Let's
dismiss outright Binh's ridiculous assertion that this is just about
historical "fact." We all know why he posted this article. But let's
tackle a few of the problems with Claiborne and Binh's assertions.
So
what actually happened in Vietnam? It's instructive to read Ho Chi
Minh's 1952 article "Imperialist Aggressors Can Never Enslave The Heroic
Vietnamese People," up on
Marxists.org. Unlike
the recipients of US armed beneficence in Libya, Ho is absolutely clear
what the role of the United States was in Indochina. He rightfully
called the American interventionists "masters" of French colonialism:
"The
U.S. interventionists have nurtured the French aggressors and the
Vietnamese puppets, but the Vietnamese people do not let anybody delude
and enslave them."
There was a brief historical moment when the strategy of Ho and the
Viet Minh was to exploit the contradictions among imperialists. In the
declaration of independence that Ho wrote, he says
"The
whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined
to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French
colonialists to reconquer their country. We are convinced that the
Allied nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the
principles of self-deter
mination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam." But
there is simply no comparison, historical or otherwise, between the
situation in Indochina in 1945 and North Africa and the Middle East in
the 2010s. There is simply no contradiction to exploit. And while I
think many debates are possible about the nature of the war between
Japan and the US, the US was aiding an actual anti-colonial national
liberation struggle, regardless of whether they were ultimately trying
to hijack it. Binh has claimed that in Libya the US was aiding a
"bourgeois democratic revolution." In the post-colonial age of
neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, this argument strikes me as
dangerously flawed. Perhaps BInh would support waves of NATO airstrikes
against the less-than-democratic regimes across Africa? What does he
think of the French neocolonialist intervention in Mali?
Who in
Libya or Syria today is calling out imperialism for what it is? It's not
the people that the US and its close allies are assisting, and that
Claiborne and Binh seem to be supporting.
One has only to look as far as Binh's North Star blog to see what the
relationship of the pro-NATO Libyan forces is to US imperialism: In
"Stage Two of the Libyan Revolution," a "Libyan Rebel" writes, unchecked by any North Star moderator,
"Since
the killing of Libya’s tyrant and official declaration of liberation,
the Libyan people began calling for the next stage in their revolution
which is state building....The attack on the U.S. consulate and the
passing of the late Chris Stevens was the straw that broke the camel’s
back. The act of attacking guests of Libya and the resulting death of a
good friend of the Libyan people highlighted the fragility of the state
and the danger these militias posed." The article is glowingly
illustrated by a picture of Libyans carrying signs like "Sorry People of
America" to atone for the attack on the
Benghazi spy den.
Back to Vietnam, it's no stretch of the imagination to draw a
straight line from US cooperation with the Viet Minh toward the end of
WWII to the US relationship with French colonialism and their various
puppets in South Vietnam after the war and the eventual defeat of the
French, to the apocalyptic war of annihilation waged by the US against
the NLF and the North Vietnamese in the 1960s and early 1970s. It would
be interesting to know what Ho Chi Minh thought, from the benefit of
historical hindsight much later before he died in 1969, whether the aid
the Viet Minh received against the Japanese was balanced by the fact it
allowed US imperialism a toehold in the independence struggle. Certainly
the appeals to American conscience in the Vietnamese Declaration of
Independence seem to have quickly given way to condemnations of American
meddling.
Which brings us to another problem with Claiborne and Binh's
arguments. They argue as though NATO intervention in Libya happened in a
bell jar. Or now, that US arming the Free Syrian Army that they
advocate would be happening in that same bell jar. Ironically they don't
seem to even notice the leap from Libya to Syria. One might think such
an attitude was quaintly naive, but neither Claiborne nor Binh are
naifs
new to the way the world works. Is it an accident that the US/NATO
embrace of the Libyan manifestation of the so-called Arab spring
corresponded to the US acquiescence of the smashing of Arab spring
revolts in the US client state of Bahrain? Is it an accident that in the
aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, full of the same brutal
violence from the sky that NATO and the US displayed in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the United States has now successfully established a drone
base in neighboring Niger? Is there no connection between what
imperialism wrought in Iraq and what they're up to now in the rest of
the Arab world?
Imperialism was emboldened by its success in
Libya. Obama's strategy — which, by the way, should be of great concern
to revolutionaries — has been to employ clients and high-tech weapons
systems to maximize US military success while minimizing the potential
for domestic opposition; this has proved itself invaluable to
imperialism's warchest. Regardless of the nature of the Gaddafi regime
(in my opinion unmourned), US imperialism achieved a major victory in
Libya. And Binh and Claiborne cheered that victory on.
Elsewhere Binh has argued that his call for arming Syrian and Libyan
"revolutionaries" doesn't mean he supports U.S. "boots on the ground."
But this is meaningless semantics. Everyone knows that the claim the US
only facilitated actual military action by NATO members Britain and
France in Libya is bullshit. And everyone knows that the claim that the
FSA is being armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar but not the US is equally
bullshit.
Imperialism is a web of dependent connections, and the
destructive, world-dominating force that is US imperialism is the
monstrous spider at the center of that web. It's true that the US finds
the presence of Salafist and Al-Qaeda-linked forces in the ranks of the
Syrian rebels somewhat problematic. It's true that despite the militant
rhetoric of the Assads over the years they have proved to be some of the
best, non-actually-threatening neighbors the Zionist regime could have
asked for, and that therefore the US and its Israeli allies are waiting
to see which way the wind blows before making their next commitments.
But the partial hesitation of US imperialism to throw its full weight
behind the Syrian opposition, or to establish something like a no-fly
zone (a thinly veiled declaration of war) shouldn't be seen as some kind
of alibi for what Binh and Claiborne are calling for.
Let's get real: Pham BInh and Clay Clayborne are standing right next
to the war criminal John McCain in calling for the US to send heavy
weapons to the Syrian rebels. The John McCain who, by the way, didn't
mind
being photographed with sectarian kidnappers in his quick jaunt across the Syrian border.
In my opinion the Assad regime is not something communists have any business
supporting.
But as the leftish Lebanese resistance movement HIzbollah and some
Palestinian factions enter an increasingly polarized conflict on Assad's
side, will Binh and Claiborne really be cheering on the shipping of
weapons to be used against, say, the PFLP?
What will be the legacy of avowed socialists supporting the military actions of "their own" imperialist power?
Karl Liebknecht taught this to us a long time ago:
"The main enemy is at home!"
The best way for those of us in imperialist countries to aid the
oppressed peoples of the world is to do everything we can to defeat the
ruling classes of our own countries. Solidarity that doesn't follow that
basic lesson is no solidarity at all: and every failure of leftists
like Binh and Claiborne to tell the truth to Libyan or Syrian rebels who
might be listening to us further weakens the already damaged reputation
of socialism.
It's not like the current conflicts aren't the first time leftists
have gone soft on imperialism. In the US wars on Korea, Vietnam, Iraq
and Afghanistan, segments of the left all abandoned their principle to
support the actions of imperialism. It's a timeworn tradition that has
happened over and over again when socialists in the homeland of
imperialism lose faith in their arguments and doctrines. And the embrace
of "state department socialism" is usually also marked by all sorts of
other accommodations to capitalism, to imperialism. It marks a shift in
roads: is this shift something the fragile and tiny US left can afford?
You
wouldn't know it from reading Claiborne and Binh's writings up on North
Star, but there are Syrian leftists who recognize the danger from
imperialism, while also completely opposing the Assad regime. From the
Syrian Leftist Coalition's statement
"A Marxist Perspective on Syria: A letter from the Syrian Left Coalition to the Leftists in the Arab Countries" (definitely worth a
read in its entirety):
"The media is trying to represent the people’s
revolution by the forces of current political “opposition”. This media
does not focus on the fighting people, but it considers an “opposition”
is combating the regime. This shallow logic reflects a shallow “Marxism”
that considers this opposition to represent the people, and thus
approaches the revolution through the opposition... No doubt these
“opposition” parties should be criticized. Parties that called for an
imperialist military intervention, and published an ethnic,
fundamentalist speech, in alliance with imperialists and reactionary
Arab regimes, should be condemned. These parties are very harmful for
the revolution as much as they delay the growth of this mass movement by
posing the a speech that frightens the minorities, and also frightens
the wide spectrum of people that supports resistance and defiance
against imperialism and Zionism...In this situation, a Marxist should be
with the people against the regime. At the same time, a Marxist should
also fight against this liberal elite “opposition” and against all these
fundamentalist forces that threaten a derailing of the revolution into
an inter-ethnic and inter-religious struggle, and this is the exact aim
the regime was trying to achieve since the beginning of the popular
uprising. This can only be achieved first by improving the role of the
oppressed masses in this struggle, expressing their demands in a clear
program, organize the revolution, and stating a strategy for this
revolution in order to overpass its spontaneity into an organized
conscious movement.... We should reject any calls for imperialist
military intervention, and on this basis also we should reject the
intervention of Russia and Iran."
Yes, this is a harder, more difficult position to maintain. The
conflict in Syria has taken thousands and thousands of innocent lives.
Lives that the United States doesn't actually care about, not one bit.
Communists must take the side of the Syrian people, and that means
telling some truths that might be unpopular and hard to hear: that
intervention of the US into the Syrian civil war, which is already
happening, will not free the Syrian people. US weapons come with long
strings attached.
So that story about Ho Chi Minh, the Viet
Minh, and the American OSS is an interesting historical tale. But as a
rationalization for abandoning everything revolutionaries know to be
true about imperialism? No thanks. The first gut response of
revolutionaries in the U.S should be to bristle with rage against the
machinations of our imperialist ruling class.
Vietnam, Libya, Syria, different stories, different times. But the enemy remains the same.
