ISIS: Genocidal Jihad Made in the USA; U.S. Out of Syria and Iraq!

ISIS: Genocidal Jihad Made in the USA
End U.S. Support for Religious Extremism around the World!
U.S. Out of Syria and Iraq!

By Steven Argue

In 1844 Karl Marx wrote in his criticism of religion:

“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.”

Even with large advances in science and human civilization since Marx wrote those words, that passage remains true to present realities. Many of the fundamental problems caused by religion remain as they have since the time of Marx.

Religion generally holds back the progress of human civilization with programs in opposition to science, the liberation of women and homosexuals, and justifying the oppression of whole nations like the Palestinian people. Religion often creates illusions that all is as it should be on Earth and our rewards for submission to the current order are in heaven or in the next life. Or, to the other extreme, religion can be a central component of fascist nationalistic movements that seek to impose “god’s order” more thoroughly on the people and destroy all who do not believe. In addition, religion poisons minds into accepting the idea that faith and a desire to believe something is more important than actual evidence. As Marx wrote in 1844, "For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism."

While liberalism often holds that all religions are good, Marxists hold the opposite view. We defend the right to religion as long as it isn’t part of the state and doesn't impose anything on the rest of us such as prayer in school, teaching so-called intelligent design, forcing women to cover their faces, sexism, genocide, fascism, feudalism, or jailing and executing people for homosexuality, abortion, and “blasphemy”. But at the same time, Marxists also reject religion on the basis of the need for evidence (i.e. the scientific method or convincing observation) to embrace any ideology. Those capable of religious beliefs are not Marxists.

Legitimate Marxists (i.e. Leninist-Trotskyists) defend the gains of the bourgeois revolution in the United States that separated religion and state. Likewise we support the republican ideals in the United Kingdom that stand for the abolition of monarchy and for the separation of church and state. Similarly, while defending the North Korean planned economy from imperialist attack and internal capitalist counterrevolution, and remembering that the U.S. government murdered 5 million Koreans in the 1950s, we see as absurd the elevation of the Kim family to the level of monarchy and the attribution of mystical powers to Kim Il Sung in his fight against Japanese and U.S. imperialism.

Legitimate Marxists reject many tenants of Stalinism, including the cult of personality found under Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung. Still, unlike many liberals, Marxists hold no special place in our hearts for supposedly friendly feudal societies with no separation of religion and state, as Tibet was before it was liberated by the Chinese Revolution. Under the Dalai Lama most people were literally slaves in grinding poverty, undernourished, uneducated, and provided no medical care. Punishments for escaped slaves and communists included cutting out people's eyes or cutting off their arms, hands, or feet. Under Dalai Lama rule, the privileged monks would advise the poor that they had bad karma from past lives, but if they performed their duties (often as slaves) in this life, they could come back in the next life as a member of the privileged ruling religious aristocracy. With the Chinese Revolution, the slaves were literally freed in Tibet, education and healthcare were provided, and life expectancy DOUBLED in the time of Mao's rule. This is not to say that Mao's distortions of Marxism and top down Stalinist methods of rule were not without serious problems, but they were a major step forward from feudalism, religious rule, slavery, capitalism, and foreign imperialist control of China. Today, those liberals who are drawn into the Dalai Lama's CIA funded mysticism and his lies of heaven on Earth under Dalai Lama rule would do well to look at realities rather than faith. As in 1844, "the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism".

U.S. imperialist support for the mysticism of the Dalai Lama is not unique. In the Middle East the United States supports many of the most backwards religious regimes and movements. It uses these forces as a club against communist and left nationalist forces that would use the resources of the region to better meet human needs.

In Israel, the U.S. gives three billion dollars in military aid a year to a religious government that promotes Jews as the “chosen people” and carries out genocide against its own Palestinian population.

In Saudi Arabia, a religious regime exists that is the most repressive government in the world, brutally oppressing homosexuals and women, and issuing severe penalties, including death, to those who do not adhere to their strict version of Islam. The United States regularly sells this government billions of dollars in weapons. Likewise, Britain, which functions largely as a junior partner to U.S. imperialism, has as its two top arms buyers Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. sent 8 billion dollars in military aid to overthrow the secular, pro-woman, left-nationalist PDPA government. They did this also with the help of their Saudi Arabian and Pakistani allies. This imperialist intervention eventually put the genocidal and anti-woman religious fanatics of the Taliban in power.

In Libya, similar to Afghanistan, military aid to rebels as well as U.S., French and British air strikes have put religious warlords in power, ending Gaddafi's measures that took some of the oil wealth out of the pockets of oil capitalists and put it towards providing the people with free education, healthcare, and housing.

In Syria, the United States supported from the beginning a movement of Sunni religious fanatics that were chanting in the streets, “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the Grave!”. As this movement took the form of an armed struggle and genocide against religious and national minorities, the United States and its allies openly aided it and ignored the genocide. Before there was an ISIS, there were its forerunners in the so-called “Free Syria Army” that were carrying out genocide against Christians, Alawites, and Shi’ites and carried out military operations against the Kurds. From this imperialist backed jihad came ISIS. Many of the genocidal religious terrorists of the Free Syria Army were recruited to Al-Nusra and ISIS, including the former Free Syria Army (FSA) terrorists who can be seen in a photo-op with John McCain, but now are part of ISIS. At the time of that photo-op, civilian Shi-ite victims of those same terrorists spoke out saying they were held captive by these same individuals and called for the release of other Shi-ites they were known to still be holding hostage at that time. This author documented FSA genocide against Christians, Allawites, and Shi’ites at that time.

As even more radical genocidal jihadi groups emerged out of the FSA, U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey continued to arm these jihadists. Turkey, which has carried out brutal genocide against its own Kurdish population with U.S. weapons, today still allows jihadist mercenaries and weapons to cross the border into Syria to join ISIS, where they commit genocide against Kurds. Yet, at the same time, the Turkish government does not allow Kurdish fighters or ammunition to cross the border to defend Kurdish communities from defeat and Nazi style mass executions at the hands of ISIS. In addition, Turkish forces are standing at the border and not allowing Kurds to flee ISIS terror into Turkey.

As ISIS troops now surround and begin to overrun the Kurdish city of Kobani, the third largest Syrian Kurd city and an important bastion of the Kurdish YPG’s anti-ISIS fight in Syria, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has stated that Kobani must be taken in the context of the over-all fight against ISIS and strongly hinted that the defense of Kobani from ISIS is not a priority of U.S. bombing operations. Truth is, Turkey, and its EU and U.S. imperialist masters, would be very happy to see the secular, pro-woman, and socialist influenced Kurdish YPG government and military forces in Syria crushed by ISIS. In the past week, more than a dozen people in Turkey have been shot and killed by the Turkish government for protesting Turkish policy against Syrian Kurds and the Kurds of Kobani. Down with the Erdegon Government! Free Turkish Kurdistan! Imperialists and Jihadists Out of Syria and Syrian Kurdish Territories!

Besides the U.S. backed jihad in Syria and the U.S. backed genocide of Kurds in Turkey, ISIS also emerges stronger from over a decade of U.S. imperialist carnage carried out in Iraq.

In Iraq, the U.S. invaded and imposed a government of sectarian religious political leaders that would carry out their capitalist and pro-imperialist agenda in the country. With the backing of the U.S. military, these leaders carried out mass death squad murders during the U.S. occupation, murdering hundreds of people per day in Baghdad alone. Over a million people have died as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and that number is still growing. Iraqi women, who had been the most liberated in the traditionally Muslim world with the exception of Soviet Central Asia, experienced major steps backward. In addition, the imperialist invasion of Iraq has imposed free trade, privatization, mass unemployment, and a shattered infrastructure that has not been properly rebuilt. Within this framework, the U.S. backed Sunni jihad in Syria against the secular government of Assad has spilled over into Iraq against the repressive Shi’ite government imposed by U.S. imperialism there. It is also within this context of that jihad becoming a threat to the U.S. backed puppet regimes in Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan that now, finally, the genocidal crimes of the Syrian jihadists are being reported in the mainstream media of the west. This author was reporting and denouncing those crimes long before they spilled over into Iraq.

Today, the Obama administration is carrying out air-strikes against the very forces that Obama was funding and on the verge of carrying out air-strikes to bring to power in Syria only a year ago. In addition, Obama is once again openly arming jihadists in Syria that are fighting to overthrow Assad’s secular government. This time, he is funding the jihadists in Syria whose program is simply limited to Syria and does not include overthrowing other U.S. backed governments in the region. U.S. air-strikes against ISIS in Syria are opposed by the Syrian government and are a violation of their national sovereignty, just as U.S. aid to genocidal jihadi rebels in Syria remain a similar violation of national sovereignty and a deadly threat to all national and religious minorities in Syria. In addition, the U.S. military air strikes against ISIS in Syria are likely to morph into missions against the Assad regime in efforts to back other U.S. armed, trained, and financed jihadist forces on the ground.

For an End to U.S., British, French, Saudi Arabian, Turkish, Israeli, and Qatari Military Aid to Jihadists in Syria!

For the Military Defeat of ISIS, the FSA, al-Nusra, and All Other Imperialist Backed Jihadists in Syria and Syrian Kurdistan!

No to U.S. Military Air-Strikes That Are Likely To Morph Into Backing Other Jihadist Forces!

U.S. Imperialists Out of the Middle East! For an End to U.S. Imperialism through Proletarian Socialist Revolution in the United States and the Rest of the World!

For the building of revolutionary Leninist-Trotskyist parties across the Middle East that fight against imperialism and capitalism and fight for pro-woman, anti-chauvinist, working class, secular rule.

-Steven Argue of the Revolutionary Tendency

This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Like the Revolutionary Tendency on Facebook

For more on these subjects read the following in-depth articles:

Syria: As Rebels Escalate Genocide Against Kurds, Obama Prepares Air Strikes to Bring Them to Power
(Written just prior to the U.S. planned air-strikes on Syria in 2013.)
By Steven Argue
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/08/31/18742429.php

End U.S. Imperialist Attacks on Liberated Syrian Kurdistan!
(Published on a Kurdish website)
By Steven Argue
http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2013/3/syriakurd753.htm

What is Socialism and Why We Oppose the Invasion of Iraq
(Written before the U.S. invaded.)
by Steven Argue
http://chicago.indymedia.org/archive/newswire/display/23800/index.php

For Women’s Liberation through Socialist Revolution!
by Steven Argue
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/03/08/18733326.php

Port Actions End Business As Usual For Israel in the United States
(Contains large amounts of information / analysis of the Palestinian struggle as well)
by Steven Argue
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/08/26/18760701.php

Afghanistan: Misogynistic Hell Hole Made in the U.S.A.
By Steven Argue
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/07/16/18717635.php

Why We Should Oppose the Imperialist War on Libya
(Written bfore imperialist efforts overthrew Gaddafi.)
By Steven Argue
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/03/25/18675579.php

Friendly Feudalism, The Tibet Myth
By Michael Parenti
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Global Warming: Obama’s Failures Compared to China’s Real Action
by Steven Argue
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/06/03/18756868.php

A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
By Karl Marx
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm