MIM Notes 182 March 15 1999

MICHIGAN STUDENT GOVERNMENT SIDES WITH IRAQI PEOPLE AGAINST 
AMERIKA

At the end of January, the University of Michigan Student Assembly 
(MSA) student government passed a resolution to support lifting 
u.$. sanctions against Iraq. The resolution passed by a vote of 
11-10, from which eight representatives, including the MSA 
president abstained. The president explained his abstention saying 
that "it takes a lot longer [than a two-hour debate] to make sure 
we are doing the right thing." But he had already attacked the 
resolution before the official debate began, questioning the 
relevance of a resolution on u.$. sanctions against Iraq to the 
student government. 

MIM supports the demands of students who have recognized that for 
as long as we live within u.$. borders we are responsible for 
opposing Amerikan aggression against other nations. The MSA and 
other student governments should attack their government's 
imperialist actions for several reasons: as youth, they can more 
clearly see the wasteful brutality of embargoing basic necessities 
from an entire nation; and as students they must understand that 
shrinking educational budgets are directly affected by increased 
military spending to enforce this embargo. 

The MSA resolution fails in one major area, by supporting some 
continued actions against Iraq while calling for the end of 
others. The resolution both allows that special conditions should 
be made for "military technology and machinery," and vilifies 
Saddam Hussein as "an unelected dictator." MIM argues that once 
activists have recognized that sanctions on food, medicine and 
commerce generally are a brutal violation of human rights, they 
should not recognize the authority of a government that supports 
such brutality to enforce any restrictions on another. 

The anti-sanctions resolution was brought to MSA by members of the 
Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and Prevent -- 
the campus anti-war-on-Iraq group. Members of these same 
progressive organizations lobbied the MSA to pass the resolution. 
The party in the MSA with the votes to get the anti-sanctions 
resolution passed was the so-called Defend Affirmative Action 
Party (DAAP). This group is connected to the Coalition to Defend 
Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary (BAMN) -- a front-group 
of the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), a Trotskyist party. 

BAMN and its covert RWL leadership do sometimes voice support for 
progressive causes. Like other phony communist parties and their 
front groups, the RWL/BAMN latches onto certain progressive 
struggles in limited ways as a means of gaining support for their 
organizations. The RWL/BAMN support for affirmative action however 
-- as for an end to sanctions against Iraq and reduced police 
activity in Ann Arbor -- is deceptive. These phony communists 
agitate around progressive causes but in ways that champion the 
interests of the middle classes (including the working-class labor 
aristocracy) instead of the interests of the most oppressed. 

While it is fine for middle class organizations to openly gather 
support for their own class, any organization that claims 
communism is claiming to work in the interests of the 
international proletariat. The phony communists, or revisionists, 
are enemies of the most oppressed because they split progressive 
forces from proletarian interests while pretending to champion 
them. In the example of the MSA resolution, the DAAP/BAMN/RWL 
supports military and technological sanctions against Iraq. This 
is an abhorrent position to any genuine communist party. No true 
ally of the international proletariat should support the largest 
imperialist power in the world to continue its control of an 
oppressed nation's ability to sustain hospitals, transportation or 
national defense. While MIM does not uphold Iraq as a proletarian 
socialist state, we reject any u.$. claim to determine that 
nation's destiny.

MIM looks to see more campus governments taking a stance against 
u.$. military actions, as the number of students recognizing the 
direct contradiction between public education and military 
spending grows. We further urge the students to directly promote 
the interests of education against the interests of increased 
militarism.

Just as universities are being pitted against prisons in u.$. 
government budgets, Amerika must choose between spending more 
money on military actions overseas or spending more money 
educating its youth. The laissez-faire Liberals and right-wingers 
try to will this contradiction out of existence by arguing that 
MSA's place is governing the student body and advocating its 
narrow interests. The reactionary campus paper, the Michigan 
Review, wrote in response to the MSA resolution that "MSA should 
mediate between the student body and University administrators, 
and represent the student body at certain inter-collegiate 
conventions." But wishing will not divide education policy and 
spending from military policy and spending. Advocating for 
students includes opposing militarism and prisons because military 
jobs, imprisonment and education are all in competition for their 
claim on young adults' lives.

The Michigan Review should in fact support the lifting of 
sanctions rather than ridiculing MSA for spending two hours 
discussing them. Side by side with its editorial opposing the MSA 
resolution, the Review ran an editorial opposing "Big Government," 
decrying the new u.s. Federal budget that "places the hand of 
Washington everywhere." If the conservatives want to be 
consistent, they should join MSA in arguing for Washington to get 
its hands off Iraq. Surely a two-hour debate among University of 
Michigan student representatives is less a drain on the taxpayers 
whose cause the Review champions than an eight-year war by 
starvation and now almost daily bombings waged against the Iraqi 
people.

While people going to college are generally the petty-bourgeoisie 
and not the proletariat, MIM supports the demands of college 
students for more attention to education in arguments like that in 
the MSA over sanctions. In general, MIM does not rally round the 
demands of the privileged classes within the imperialist nations, 
because usually these demands come at the expense of the 
international proletariat. But it is better for the petty-
bourgeoisie to go to college than for the military to bomb and 
enforce sanctions against Iraq. If the college students can 
successfully pit their own interests against the interests of u.$. 
militarism, then they are acting as true allies of the Iraqi 
people.

Sources: Michigan Daily, 27 January 1999; Michigan Review, 10 
February, 1999. 

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