BY OLYMPIA NEWTON  
The expanding presence of the U.S. military in the Americas and throughout the world is a sign not of the strength of U.S. imperialism, but of its weakness. Less and less able to impose their will on the peoples of the world through economic and political clout, the U.S. rulers increasingly must rely on Washington’s military might to brutalize and try to intimidate working people the world over in order to defend and extend their power and profits.

World capitalism has entered the beginnings of a deep economic depression. In the United States major corporations such as United Airlines and Ford Motor company are effectively bankrupt. Unemployment is rising, and industrial production is contracting. The U.S. rulers have no way out of this crisis, and the consequences are driving them toward deeper political, economic, and military penetration of the semicolonial world. They must conquer new markets to try to prop up their dying system, and they must try to crush the resistance that imperialism generates around the world. They need to increase even more their share of the world’s natural resources against their imperialist rivals in France, Germany, Japan, and other imperialist countries.

Plan Colombia, which involves the deeper penetration of U.S. military forces in Latin America, is aimed not only at greater U.S. domination of import and export markets throughout the region, but also at targeting working people across Latin America. From Argentina to Brazil, from Venezuela to Ecuador to Colombia itself, the U.S. rulers anticipate that the resistance to assaults on the economic conditions and political rights of workers and peasants, and to imperialist military intervention, will only increase as the world economic crisis deepens. And they are readying themselves to try to meet that resistance with brutality in order to defend their class interests.

Washington continues to use the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, for bombing exercises to prepare its military aggression abroad. The massive destruction of the resources of that island and the callous disregard for the lives and livelihoods of its residents at the hands of the U.S. military are only a piece of the conditions imposed on the Puerto Rican people by U.S. imperialism for over 100 years, as a direct colony of the United States.

The U.S. government uses its military bases in Latin America and throughout the world as launching pads for bloody assaults against our brothers and sisters. They have already deployed tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East as part of their buildup toward war against the people of Iraq. U.S. and British forces have stepped up the pace and intensity of their bombing of Iraq, targeting Iraqi defense systems. They are openly preparing a ground invasion of that country.

This war is one among many wars imperialism will launch against the peoples of the semicolonial world. It is part of redividing the wealth and resources of the Middle East--and of Africa, Asia, and Latin America--to strengthen Washington’s position against rival imperialist powers. U.S. imperialism has its sights on what it lost with the Iranian revolution of 1979, as well as on the mineral and oil resources of Africa. This coming war will not stop at Iraq’s borders.

At the same time, so-called United Nations weapons inspectors are subjecting Iraq to open-ended searches of more than 700 sites. Washington’s effort to carry out this attack on Iraq’s sovereignty under UN banners is aimed at giving it a thin veil of legitimacy before world bourgeois public opinion, but does not change one iota the imperialist character of the bloody assault that is on the horizon.

As Fidel Castro explained in October 1962, during what is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis: "The first thing that ought to be inspected are the U.S. bases from which invasions are launched.... This demand for inspection aims to validate the U.S. presumption that it can violate our right to freely act within our borders, that it can dictate what we can or cannot do within our borders.

"Anyone who tries to come and inspect Cuba should know that he’d better come in full combat gear."

Other imperialist powers in North America and Europe will line up behind a war against Iraq, including those governments that are today attempting to keep at arm’s length from Washington. Just as the U.S. rulers aim to advance their control of the world’s resources, the governments of Germany, France, Canada, Greece, and other imperialist powers also want to ensure their piece of the pie. It is the responsibility of the anti-imperialist forces within these countries to fight against their own governments during the preparations for this war, as we, the revolutionary forces inside the United States, are doing. This is the greatest act of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the semicolonial world who are being, and will continue to be, slaughtered by the same imperialist governments that assault our rights at home.

While we cannot predict the outcome, this war will set into motion uncontrollable forces. The Palestinian people continue to refuse to get on their knees in the fight against Israeli dispossession of their homeland. Cuba continues to stand as an example in the world of what is possible when working people take political power and begin to organize a new society in the interests of the toiling majority. And working people inside the United States continue to fight to defend our living and working conditions against the effects of the capitalist economic crisis.

We stand in solidarity with every worker in the United States who presses for their interests against the attacks of the government. We will not subordinate our struggles to the U.S. rulers’ war.

Through their actions around the world, the imperialists will create millions of revolutionaries from the United States to the Middle East and Africa, from Asia to Latin America. Those who join this resistance will become over time the proletarian army that will develop the ability, leadership, and organization to overthrow the rule of the capitalists. We stand with anti-imperialist fighters everywhere in our pledge to fight to take political power out of the hands of the warmakers in the United States. It is only through making a socialist revolution that workers, farmers, and young people in the United States can finally rid the world of the final empire and the enemy of humanity--U.S. imperialism.
 
 
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