Vol. 73/No. 11      March 23, 2009

The march to the Pentagon will demand all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and will protest Washington’s support for Tel Aviv’s assaults against the Palestinian people.

Washington is escalating its war in Afghanistan—and in Pakistan—and has announced it will maintain what will effectively be a garrison force in Iraq.

The U.S. military began joint exercises in South Korea March 9 aimed at North Korea, involving more than 26,000 U.S. and 30,000 South Korean troops. And the U.S. government has threatened to shoot down a communications satellite Pyongyang plans to launch.

Under the banner of “humanitarian concern,” the U.S. government and other imperialist powers are preparing to seize upon the mass sectarian killings in Darfur as a pretext to strengthen their domination of that region.

Washington continues to threaten the world with its massive nuclear arsenal as it develops an antiballistic missile system to re-establish first-strike capability. To maintain its unmatched strategic advantage, Washington seeks to prevent the development and spread of nuclear technology, denying other semicolonial nations such as Iran the right to develop the energy resources they choose in order to expand electrification—a precondition for economic and social development.

The accelerating war drive by Washington and its current allies and rivals is an inevitable by-product of the unfolding worldwide economic crisis with its intensifying competition between imperialist powers. And the crisis has barely begun.

The U.S. rulers will seek to crank up their war machine in this period. Not only to more effectively defend their interests in the world, but as the one area where they can spend government funds to boost their declining industrial production without competing with private capital.

This course is nothing new. The New Deal, for example, was a War Deal. Its inevitable consequence was to drag workers in the United States into the bloody inter-imperialist slaughter known as World War II.

The imperialists are preparing for a period of incessant wars abroad, which flow from their mounting attacks on the living standards and rights of workers at “home.” Capitalism will continue to inflict its death and misery on the world’s toilers—until the wages system is replaced with the rule of working people, as it has been in Cuba.

Protests against the imperialist war drive—as are the upcoming demonstrations for legalization of immigrants on May 1—are part of defending the interests of the international working class.

All out for March 21! Not one penny, not one soldier for Washington’s wars!
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. war exercises threaten N. Korea
March 21 demonstrations will protest Afghan, Iraq wars
U.S. talks with Syrian officials seek to pressure Iranian gov’t
Order to arrest Sudan president is pretext for imperialist intervention  
 
 
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