Airstrip One

Those who wish or predict defeat - 27th March 2003, 18.05

Scott Ritter has stated that Iraq will be a quagmire. The Russian people have certainly proved themselves as opponents.

Russia is most certainly not on the list. A public opinion survey published there Wednesday showed that 74 percent of those surveyed said they hoped that the Iraqi army would defeat the coalition forces.

But the greatest number are not the anti-war demonstrators but the pro-iraqi movement, although the media tends to confuse the two. The latter is Muslim in its membership and structure and has moved from calling for coalition forces to stand down to defeat of the West.

Several Pakistani cities saw new protests today. There was a protest in Srinagar, India, as well, where Muslim students shouted, "Iraqis will defeat infidels."

Or the usual ultra-left suspects who support a war for Iraqi defence and revolution but not Saddam Hussein (does not compute!)..

The crimes of the Ba’athists against Iraqi workers, Kurds and Shi’ites serve to underline why the call for military defense of Iraq is counterposed to any political support to the Saddam Hussein regime. In this war, our position is one of revolutionary defensism toward Iraq: seeking to combine the struggle for national independence against American imperialist militarism with a social revolution against the Iraqi capitalists and landowners. But to this day, the Iraqi proletariat suffers from the legacy of its defeat in 1958-59. This underlines the necessity for the most advanced elements of the Iraqi proletariat to draw the lessons of the 1958-59 betrayal and fight to cohere a Leninist-Trotskyist party committed to the political independence of the proletariat. Only through proletarian revolutions against all the bonapartist dictators, sheiks and Zionist butchers can the workers and oppressed throw off the yoke of imperialism and lay the basis for a socialist federation of the Near East.

Lastly, for some reason, the Muslim Association of Britain (where's the great?) has taken down its online forums!