U.S. officials have announced that under an American-run martial law regime they plan to install in Baghdad, they will award all initial construction and oil contracts in that nation to U.S. companies. Even London, Washington’s main ally, is squealing about getting left out of the booty. The French imperialists, who stand to lose the most because of the lucrative trade they have maintained with Iraq over the past decade, are demanding the occupation regime be run under United Nations auspices to keep their foot in the door.

All of this shows that this is an imperialist war, an assault in the interests of the superwealthy rulers of the United States and their counterparts in other countries--and against the interests of working people in the Mideast, the United States, Britain, and the world over. To hide their aims, the U.S. rulers try to make working people identify as "we Americans" and rally behind "our government." But for workers and farmers, it’s not our government. It’s their government, which acts on behalf of the bosses who today are waging a war at home on the rights and living standards of working people.

The pro-war, patriotic campaign to "support our troops" is likewise designed to draw working people behind our exploiters. The U.S. military is an institution that serves their interests, not ours. The soldiers themselves, who in their big majority are fellow workers and farmers in uniform, are used as cannon fodder for the billionaire rulers. For that reason, workers and youth opposed to the U.S.-led war in the Mideast should demand "Bring the troops home now!" The troops, not "our" troops. Class-conscious workers should also refuse to wear the yellow ribbons that are part of the pro-war propaganda campaign.

The current debate in the U.S. ruling class over military strategy sheds some light on what imperialism has in store for humanity. The debate is driven by the need of the U.S. rulers to go to war to protect their class interests, not only--or primarily--in Iraq but around the world. Capitalism has entered a prolonged depression. Each of the competing ruling classes is trying to put their armed forces in fighting trim to be in a better position to redivide the world in its favor. The American imperialists, number one among the world’s "civilized" hyenas, have the most at stake.

On one side of this debate are many former U.S. military commanders whose outlook is to a large extent marked by Washington’s defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese people in the 1970s and by the resulting distrust among working people for the government’s direction of foreign and military policy, and refusal to subordinate our struggles to calls for "national unity." These advocates of the "Powell Doctrine" argue that Washington should launch a war only if it deploys overwhelming military force in order to minimize the political price of U.S. casualties and the risks of a protracted conflict. In the Gulf War and the 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, for example, Washington relied on massive aerial bombing campaigns for weeks or months to limit or avoid the need for a ground assault.

Those who subscribe to the "Rumsfeld doctrine," on the other hand, argue for waging war with a smaller, more agile force, relying heavily on Special Forces and being willing to take greater risks in the field. In a set of "guidelines" drafted in 2001, Donald Rumsfeld wrote that Washington must avoid "promising not to do things (i.e., not to use ground forces, not to bomb below 20,000 feet, not to risk U.S. lives, not to permit collateral damage, not to bomb during Ramadan, etc.)."

The U.S. rulers need to get public opinion used to sustaining U.S. casualties and confronting resistance from a tenacious enemy--used to the kind of wars they will unleash again and again in coming decades. They need to train an officer corps with combat experience and self-confidence. They need blood on their hands--the blood of the GIs they send to die for the interests of the wealthy--in order to rally patriotic fervor behind their predatory aims. The White House is working hard to use the current war to make progress on these goals of the bondholders and other billionaires it represents.

Washington increasingly needs to wage more than one war at a time. Their current target is Iraq, but they are already carrying out a war drive against Iran and north Korea. Other countries, including revolutionary Cuba, are in their crosshairs, too. The imperialist rulers will continue to drag working people into such wars until workers and farmers take that power out of their hands. We need to study and gain an understanding of how imperialism works and absorb the lessons of the modern workers movement in order to chart the only effective course to end imperialism, its wars, and its philosophy of plunder: make a revolution, take the power out of the hands of the warmongers, and build a socialist society based on human solidarity.
 
 
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U.S. troops approach Baghdad, accelerate slaughter in Iraq  
 
 
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