The Bloodthirsty Braggadocio of Donald Trump, the Assassination of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi... and Who Rains Down the Most Terror
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On Sunday morning, the world awoke to Donald Trump posturing and preening about how “we” killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, braying about al-Baghdadi’s cowardice and giving graphic descriptions of the killing.
From the standpoint of the interests of humanity, there is nothing to celebrate, nor is there anything to mourn, in the U.S. killing of ISIS (Islamic State) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
ISIS is a totally reactionary force, most noted for its regimes of mass rape, forced conversion and forced ignorance, sadistic ritual executions, and Dark Ages terror wherever it ruled or touched. But for sheer oppression and human suffering, ISIS cannot come close to America and its decades-long reign of terror in the Middle East. This terror enforces the U.S. domination of the economies and political structures of the region.
From wars, coups, and subversion that it has carried out and/or fomented and supported—from Iraq to Lebanon, from Palestine-Israel to Iran, and right down today to the horrific American or American-backed wars in Yemen and Afghanistan—America is the Terrorist Supreme. Millions of human beings have been killed, millions more driven into exile, and literally hundreds of millions sentenced to lives of misery and humiliation because of America’s invasions, proxy wars, and support for brutal regimes. All this in service of a system of capitalism-imperialism, dominated by the U.S. (Go here to get sense of what this means for the people of that region.)
The conflict between the U.S., with its decades of domination and murder on the one hand, and the utterly reactionary brutal response it has called forth from the likes of ISIS on the other, is a true nightmare. Bob Avakian (BA) has characterized this as part of a conflict between “historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other.” And he goes on to say: “If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both.” (BAsics 1:28)
Humanity needs another way—the way of the new communism developed by BA.
It must also be said here Trump’s glorying in the grisly description of the killing of al-Baghdadi, as well as the braggadocio he indulged in during the press conference after the official statement was done, was not just disgusting but part and parcel of the fascist mentality he promotes. The Trump/Pence regime—with its apocalyptic end-times worldview, its naked professions that American lives are more important than other people’s lives, along with the itchy Twitter finger of the lunatic-in-chief on the nuclear button—remains an extreme and present danger to the world’s people. It must be driven out, at the soonest possible time, by massive, sustained, nonviolent struggle. At a moment when Trump faces impeachment proceedings and accusations of sacrificing “national security” for his personal political gain, the regime will no doubt try to use this killing to seize political initiative, maintain and strengthen its grip on the state, and move closer to a fully consolidated fascist regime.
As for the Democrats—with their applause for this supposed triumph as well as their resentment at being left out of the planning—this whole spectacle shows that when it comes to basic aims, the Democrats are, as Obama once so infamously said, “on the same team” as Trump. For them the domination of their system over the masses of people, here and around the world, comes first. They have joined in on every ugly act carried out by the U.S. in the Middle East (see here for examples). Indeed, before Saturday they were castigating Trump for not being “tough enough.” All this shows that while the conflicts between the Democrats and the regime can potentially provide openings for the masses’ struggling “from below,” the Democrats can in no way be relied upon.
To step back to the whole picture: both these roads, U.S. imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, are dead ends for humanity. To again quote BA, humanity has two choices: “either live with all this and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all... or make revolution!” Few things bring the truth of that out as sharply as the horrendous situation in the Middle East.
The Republican Party Is Fascist
The Democratic Party Is Also a Machine of Massive War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
This System CANNOT Be Reformed—It MUST Be Overthrown!
We Need an Actual Revolution
Clip: "Free Yourself from the GTF!"
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