U.S. troops on way to join offensive in Gardez, Afghanistan. Pentagon has mounted brutal air onslaught, including use of 2,000-pound 'thermobaric' bomb. Apologists for Washington boast that 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters have been killed in assault.

The imperialist powers and their junior partner Israel, gave working people quite a taste this week of the brutal future they hold for humanity. On the military front Israel launched daily assaults against the Palestinian people; the U.S.-led "coalition" in Afghanistan began an offensive, killing hundreds of Afghans and their allies along with nine U.S. servicemen; and Washington continued to probe and build a case to attack Iraq.

Steps toward deployment of more U.S. forces in Georgia, the Philippines, Yemen, and Colombia were also taken by the U.S. rulers.

At the same time Washington continued its trade war, imposing steep tariffs on steel to protect the U.S. steel trusts, leading the imperialist powers in Europe and Japan to threaten retaliatory measures. And the Bush administration, with broad bipartisan backing, announced proposals that if carried out would mark a further assault on the social wage, targeting Social Security and welfare benefits.

As he pledged in his January State of the Union address, Bush is pressing forward the rulers' "two-front war" at home and abroad. Working people around the world can take for good coin the U.S. president's pledge that "this is just the beginning"--not only in battlefield deaths of U.S. servicemen, but in their drive against the rights, union organization, and wages and conditions on the job of working people at home.

This is the brutal logic of the march of imperialism to war and economic and social devastation. Despite objections and complaints by its imperialist rivals about Washington's "unilateral" actions in the world, each is doing what it can to send troops and warplanes to attack and kill the small group of Taliban and al Qaeda forces trapped in the high mountains of Afghanistan. None even challenge the complete dominance of the military power and capacities of U.S. imperialism. Each must keep deploying their forces as best they can in order to keep their place in the pecking order and feeding chain of the vultures of imperialism.

The lack of any pretense by Washington that the battle in Afghanistan is either organized or authorized by the regime in Kabul is another mark of its course toward the establishment of a protectorate in the country. U.S. military bases are getting larger around the country, making it little more than a giant beached aircraft carrier for imperialist forces in the region.

The failure of the Israeli regime to break the Palestinian people and force them to give up on their struggle for self-determination has led the colonial-settler state into a dead-end death trap for Jews who live there. While it has remained a military garrison outpost for imperialism and a bulwark against the aspirations of the Arab masses, more Israeli citizens recognize that the country has no economic future and the course its capitalist rulers continue to follow will simply drag them more deeply into conflict with the Palestinian people.

Extended to a world scale, the U.S. rulers are already preparing a similar future for working people in the United States. The difference is that there is no other United States to go to. From Zimbabwe and Argentina, to Japan and Korea, imperialism cannot offer an expanding world economy and brighter prospects for the future of humanity. The relative boom made possible by the interimperialist slaughter of World War II has long been in decline. Despite temporary periods of economic growth, the crisis of world capitalism cannot be resolved without the capitalist rulers imposing devastating defeats on working people the world over, including unleashing nuclear war as they attempt to salvage their outmoded system.

The battle against imperialism and its wars also begins at home. Joining marches for black lung benefits, picket lines against police brutality, strikes of nurses and meat packers, and rallies against government austerity measures are examples of how to begin to answer the horrors Washington and its allies are visiting on the world and to advance the struggle against imperialism.

Reading, studying, and selling books such as From the Escambray to the Congo, Capitalism's World Disorder, and Che Guevara Talks to Young People, along with the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, are concrete ways to build a revolutionary leadership and proletarian parties today, capable of leading the fight to replace the government of the capitalist rulers with one of workers and farmers.
 
 
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