Our Tactics Within The Strategy of the Common Front: Values Matter, Our Cause Must Be Just And Inclusive

Originally published in LeftLinks
 
By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Newsweekly for March 6, 2026

The week finds us fully immersed and, we hope, fully engaged in the common front against war and fascism, both at home and abroad.

It is not a drill. The current challenge confronts us everywhere, from what books are allowed in our libraries to destroying schools full of young girls in Iran.

As a U.S. left, we are in a defining moment. Can we unite our ‘militant minority’ and expand a principled opposition to Trump’s ICE attacks and unrestricted war waging alongside a solidarity with the insurgencies of the oppressed and exploited inside Iran and elsewhere? Then, can we also deploy our ‘militant minority’ as a critical force that seeks wider unity with a latent but awakening progressive anti-MAGA majority?

First, why ‘principled?’ Because there is a wide array of political forces opposing Trump and his ‘war of choice.’ Some oppose Trump for lack of clarity in how to render Iran into a subordinate U.S.-Israeli protectorate. Others seek to use standard ‘rules of engagement’ that our ‘War Secretary’ Pete Hegseth has dumped into the wastebasket:

“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Our War Secretary doesn’t understand the most important thing about warfare. Wars are political battles, not simply soldiers with advanced weapons plus boot camp rhetoric about unrestricted ‘killing people and breaking things.’ Throwing out ‘rules of engagement’ with a smirk, messaging that only sissies are concerned with such matters, tells us what we need to know: Hegseth’s hidden rules were written as a combination of Confederate lynch law, Gestapo practices and Old Testament Iron Age genocidal instructions regarding the Amalek nomads from Yahweh: “Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!” (1Samuel: 15) The Amalikites, the ‘Christian’ right will remind us, were kith and kin to the Persians, the core of today’s Iran (Esther 9: 5-10).

It’s not a minor slip. Hegseth has had his Christian Reconstruction pastor, Douglas Wilson, a Biblical patriarchal theocrat opposed to the Constitution on multiple grounds, delivering sermons to officers at the Pentagon. In addition, Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, stated, when asked about the biblical promise of land to Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates, “It would be fine if they [Israel] took it all.”Finally, Hegseth-aligned officers, according to a non-commissioned officer quoted in The Guardian on March 3, 2026, had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ”….“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”

Now we know why Hegseth, Trump, and the Department of Justice have so relentlessly attacked the six Members of Congress, all veterans, who produced a video where they simply cited the Uniform Code of Military Justice on the duty and legality of disobeying illegal orders.

Trump and his War Secretary wanted them immediately hanged for treason, but the six vets stood their ground. They knew the UCMJ, which took effect in 1951, was significantly shaped by the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Nuremberg established the legal principle that “following orders” is not a valid defense for war crimes, thus compelling the U.S. military to adopt a duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders. Trump and Hegeseth, by their opposition to the UCMJ, find themselves backing the case of the Nazi defendants. Instead of a trial at Nuremberg, one small but significant victory of the anti-fascist war, they would have simply shot them all without trial.

With the Middle East region teetering on the edge of a wider catastrophe, progressive activists and concerned citizens must rise to the challenge of opposing destructive military actions while standing in solidarity with those struggling for freedom and justice inside Iran. Our response must be deeply rooted in our core values.

The first and most immediate responsibility for us is to oppose all forms of U.S. and Israeli military aggression against Iran. This includes not only bombings and naval attacks, but also economic sanctions and covert operations that inflict suffering on ordinary Iranians. History has shown that such actions rarely weaken authoritarian regimes; instead, they devastate civilian populations, fuel nationalism, and close off space for dissent. The U.S. left must demand an end to these policies, calling for de-escalation and diplomacy over violence and collective punishment.

At the same time, our solidarity must extend to the courageous ‘Woman Life Freedom’ movement, rights for the Kurds and other oppressed nationalities, and working-class and small business insurgencies inside Iran that challenge the repressive theocratic regime. These movements, often led at great personal risk, seek genuine social and economic justice, gender equality, and democratic freedoms. The U.S. left should amplify their voices, support their campaigns, and foster connections that transcend borders—without imposing outside agendas or overshadowing their agency. This solidarity is not just a moral imperative; it is a vital part of building a future rooted in internationalist mutual liberation.

In this way, we are opposed to the ‘campist left’ that would ignore, downplay, or even slander the forces for national and democratic revolution in Iran. Instead, they stress the ‘anti-imperialism’ of the clerical fascists because of their material support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine/Israel. Iran has had its own hegemonic aims to envelop all the Shia throughout the Middle East. We might compare Iran’s ‘anti-imperialism’ with Japan’s ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’ pegged at the time by Japan as a common front of peoples of color against ‘white world supremacy.’

At the same time, we do not ignore the sphere of ‘state-to-state’ relations in a world order. In this volatile context, the United Nations remains an important—if imperfect—avenue for pursuing diplomatic solutions and upholding international law. The U.S. left should advocate for the U.S. to make use of the UN to facilitate negotiations, allow for internal development and international trade, monitor human rights, and press all parties to respect the sovereignty and rights of the Iranian people. International bodies can help provide alternatives to war and sanctions, even as we recognize their limitations and the need for ongoing reform. The UN today is very different from the UN of the 1950s.

Demanding that our government heed the UN Charter and its principles of peaceful coexistence, the Declaration of Human Rights, and the two world courts is a worthy cause that can also unite a militant minority with a broader, emerging progressive majority. With their incredible organizing efforts, the third ‘No Kings’ rising promises to be the most powerful yet. It demands—No Kings, No ICE, No wars—are exactly what the times require of us as a starting point.

We must oppose the machinery of war and economic strangulation, and we must express unwavering solidarity with those inside Iran fighting for a better world. By holding fast to these principles, the U.S. left can help chart a course away from destruction and toward justice, peace, and international solidarity. That program serves the American people on the home front as well. The time to act and build our organizations is now.