The August 24 march in Puerto Rico and other upcoming actions against the planned U.S. military exercises on the island of Vieques deserve the support of all working people. Rather than subordinating their struggles to the imperatives of U.S. imperialism, the fighters who are engaged in these protests are standing up to it and its war drive. By their stance and through their deeds, they prove that the fight to get Washington off their soil, and end their colonial subjugation, represents the future.

Since mid-1999, when an "errant" navy bomb killed a Vieques resident, many thousands of people in Puerto Rico and the United States have protested against the U.S. military’s occupation of the island. The 23 days of exercises that will begin September 3 are a reminder that in spite of granting the occasional concession under the heat of this movement, Washington will continue to use Vieques as much as it can get away with. Few other pieces of land and shore offer the U.S. rulers the advantages that a colonial possession does in training their military for new wars of aggression.

Since Washington seized Puerto Rico as a colony more than a century ago, it has stationed thousands of troops there, and repeatedly used it as a launching pad for military assaults.

The U.S. rulers assert their right to do this as colonial masters of the territory. That is why Vieques is so important to them--because in their eyes it is "theirs." Puerto Ricans, including those who have been hauled off to jail for camping on "navy" land, could justifiably ask: "Who are the trespassers here?"

Today, Washington is driven to step up its use of military force to assert its primacy among its imperialist rivals, and to keep in line the workers and farmers of the semicolonial world. Its threats and violence reflect not strength but weakness. It drives to war at the same time as a long-term crisis of profits--accompanied by the rumblings of a potential collapse in the financial and banking system--restricts its ability to buy off a layer of working people. Guns, but no butter--that is what the U.S. imperialists have to offer working people and youth.

The trajectory of the last empire is not toward a "liberated Iraq" or any other country, in spite of the words of Vice President Richard Cheney. Rather it is toward wars of colonial conquest and subjugation, each of which exposes more of its flanks to national rebellions and struggles by workers and farmers across the globe.

Just in the last decade, as it has organized a series of wars and interventions, the U.S. government has been forced to station its troops on the territory of the Yugoslav and Afghan peoples whom it assaulted. Now figures in the ruling class are sharply posing the fact that a victorious assault on Iraq would of necessity be followed by a long-term occupation by U.S. troops.

The people of Puerto Rico know something of such colonial policies. They have endured a century of bitter experience of U.S. military occupation and colonial rule. Each generation, however, has brought forth fighters for self-determination and independence.

These are the stakes in building a movement to force the U.S. military off Vieques, and the United States imperialists off all of Puerto Rico. This is a fight in the interests of workers and farmers in the United States and across the globe who are exploited and oppressed by the imperialists. Increasing numbers of working people and youth engaged in struggle can be won to championing the demands:

No more bombing! U.S. out of Vieques! Independence for Puerto Rico!
 
 
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Hundreds condemn planned U.S. Navy bombing of Vieques  
 
 
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