Progressives need to unite against criminals who bomb universities in Iraq

I want to propose that we engage in a little clear thinking about the latest cowardly attack on students and staff at a University in Iraq.

I believe this attack is just another little 9/11, and also believe that no one posting on this thread would offer any support for it.  It is not any unfortunate mistake from a ‘brave resistance’ against a foreign occupation.  This deliberate targeting of civilians is mass murder, pure and simple. People who perpetrate such crimes are the direct enemy of all progressives the world over. I am prepared to unite with other people who have disagreed with my views of history in order to defeat this enemy now. It will be a protracted struggle, and it urgently requires support from progressive people everywhere.

I argue that the Iraqi Government has every right to expect the full support of progressives everywhere in hunting down those who wage such a war on the democratic right of the Iraqi people to attend educational institutions.  I believe the government of Prime Minister Maliki, quite correctly, will not surrender or engage in any form of appeasement by negotiating power sharing with these enemy forces. Rather they will, in cooperation with their willing allies, continue to develop a strategy for defeating these killers. Jihadis perpetrating these attacks must be fought, for as long as it takes to stop them.

There can be no time table to this ‘just war’ and I recognize the Iraqi government must be and is the leading force in waging it. However this government, while constituting the leading force, does not yet, as a result of the ethnic divisions within Iraq, constitute the main force. That main force is still necessarily provided by troops from the Coalition who I suggest are generally accepted by the Iraqi peoples as non sectarian total outsiders.  (I am not here denying that many Iraqis distrust the Americans for other reasons).  

It is vital for the Iraqis to develop the non sectarian quality and quantity of their armed forces so that these forces will be able to constitute both the leading force and the main force and I think that the imminent U.S. escalation is (ironically) designed to bring about that change – that is, the Iraqis will become the leading force and the main force as well, over the next 1-2 years.

People prepared to unite in supporting the students and staff of Iraq’s Universities and schools are clearly going to be involved in a long war because ‘the pipelines of death’ that they are up against are firmly established throughout the Islamic world.  The mostly young suicide bombers, the product of the madrassas from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan and all the rest, are now flowing freely (as was always planned by al Qaeda and others. There does not appear to be any shortage of the requisite 70 virgins per bomber in heaven either.) 

Principled unity in the face of the current enemy is absolutely necessary - genuine progressive forces everywhere should refuse to stand aside while such outrages are perpetrated in Iraq.

The breadth of unity possible in this cause encompasses over 95% of humanity.    What differences progressives have had in the past are not sufficient to prevent unity based on principles of peaceful coexistence under arrangements that provide for democratic norms of conduct and the preservation of minority rights as guaranteed by the Iraqi constitution.

If we are really seeking to unite, to defeat the enemy that has perpetrated this latest bombing outrage, we must not condone any attacks on the Iraqi Government or on the allies that they are prepared to unite with.  It boils down to “which side are you on"?