All this depends, though, on the defeat of NATO in the Mideast. That is a prerequisite for revolution in the foreseeable future.
How can NATO be defeated? Of the many Muslim groups that oppose Western domination, only the fundamentalists are willing to die in sufficient numbers to drive out imperialism. Repulsive and reactionary as they are, the fanatics of ISIS, al Qaeda, and Taliban have the strength of arms and faith to defeat NATO's military, economic, and cultural invasion of their areas. None of the other groups comes close to being able to do this.
The prospect of their winning sends a shiver of dread through us because they are indeed brutal and intolerant. But in the West tolerance is disappearing as governments curtail civil liberties and criminalize dissent, primarily as proactive preparation against the coming revolutions in their own countries. And the West is far more brutal. The fundamentalists are killing hundreds, but NATO and its proxies are killing hundreds of thousands, and in much more horrible ways. Beheading is mercifully quick compared to the slow agony of burns and shrapnel. These deaths don't make the news because that would shatter the propaganda myth necessary to drum up war fever. The varieties of violence that NATO is inflicting on these countries are much more destructive than those of the fundamentalists. WE are the top terrorist. But the mainstream media's demonization campaign prevents us from perceiving that.
The West started this war in order to continue its control of Mideast resources. The so-called terrorists are people driven to drastic means to defend their homeland from multi-pronged foreign aggression. Their brutality comes from decades of being brutalized. Despite media lies to the contrary, Muslim countries have on balance been far more peaceful than Christian countries. They're not trying to conquer us, we're trying to conquer them, to control them through puppet governments. They're fighting to throw us out, not by winning big battles but by wearing us down militarily and financially through prolonged guerrilla warfare as the Vietnamese did.
What can we as socialists do?
We can accept the lesser evil of a fundamentalist victory without rejoicing in it, and we can help progressive groups in the Mideast -- socialists, women, trade unionists -- to build underground organizations that can withstand fundamentalist oppression and eventually defeat it. Most of all we can prepare the working class for the coming revolution.
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