Pursuing that aim, the U.S. government succeeded in overthrowing the Baathist party regime in Iraq at minimal political cost in the short term. The White House ran right over the objections of liberal Democratic critics who, sharing the same strategic goals, had offered tactical advice on how best to conduct the imperialist drive against Baghdad. Despite the bleatings from liberals about a military “quagmire,” the U.S. armed forces carried out a rapid invasion and takeover of Iraq with few U.S. casualties.

Washington chose a target that was an easy mark. The rotted-out capitalist regime in Baghdad—which relied on creaky Soviet military hardware and bureaucratic military organization, demoralizing the army ranks—simply shattered. These military successes have boosted the morale of the U.S. officer corps, which is no longer marked by the “Vietnam Syndrome.” They proved that U.S. imperialism has been able to improve its armed forces, both increasing the effectiveness of its military technology and relying on the political advantages of a volunteer army.

Today, liberal forces, jockeying to score partisan points against the Bush administration as they step up their campaigning for the 2004 presidential race, offer more dire warnings and hypocritical hand-wringing about the “messiness” of an imperialist military occupation and the fact that no chemical or biological weapons have been found—as though the discovery of such evidence would justify Washington’s war of plunder. But the absence or presence of “weapons of mass destruction” has not and will not hinder the U.S. government, which simply used the argument as only one of its many reasons for the assault. “Regime change,” one of Bush’s top justifications for the takeover of Iraq, was supported by most of the president’s critics.

The U.S.-led drive against Iran is a continuation of the same course, but it is shaping up to take a different path from the assault on Iraq. Since 1979, Washington’s aim has been to seek the overthrow of the Iranian government. That year workers and farmers in Iran carried out a revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed monarchy and changed the relationship of class forces in the Mideast to the disadvantage of imperialism. While the regime in Tehran is capitalist and wrapped in reactionary clerical forms, the political self-confidence and expectations of working people in Iran remain an obstacle to U.S. imperialism.

Today Washington is not preparing an invasion of that country, which would entail a political price it is unwilling to pay at this point. Instead, it is pursuing other means to bring about the ouster of the current regime—which it considers not reliable enough for safeguarding imperialist interests in the region—and replace it with one that will do the job. The U.S. government is pressuring Tehran to extract concessions, and it has been getting results. It is demanding that Iran stop its nuclear program and put Lebanon-based Hezbollah out of commission. Washington is threatening nuclear weapons “inspections,” economic sanctions, cross-border raids by Mujahedeen combatants based in Iraq, and, if those fail, the possible bombing of Iranian nuclear plants.

Washington registered further progress at the recent G-8 summit. With unanimous agreement these governments—including Paris and Berlin—issued a resolution that condemned Iran and north Korea for trying to develop nuclear weapons and threatened punitive measures against them. If Iran is deemed to be in violation of imperialist-dictated nonproliferation agreements—which allow the major imperialist powers to have nuclear weapons but not most semicolonial countries—then the case will automatically be taken to the UN Security Council, which could consider giving its blessing to further aggressive measures. The U.S. government can be expected to get more such resolutions approved by the UN Security Council and other international bodies that, despite self-serving denials by Paris et al., will be used as political cover to press the imperialist war drive. Because of their weakness relative to Washington, these powers will go along with the U.S.-led drive in order to get their hands on at least some of the spoils.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq is a blow to workers and farmers around the world, one that will not be reversed tomorrow. To chart a clear course in opposition to imperialism and its wars, working people need to understand the underlying causes of the imperialist war drive and longer-term trends in world politics.

The assault on Iraq and the war drive against Iran, north Korea, and other countries are not the result of one American president’s personal intentions or conjunctural factors. The current actions by Washington are part of a bipartisan course that began well before the Bush administration took office. The war and occupation of Iraq were carried out not by a “fascist” administration but by “democratic” imperialism. This imperialist drive toward war is fueled by the economic decline of the capitalist system, which is marked by a 30-year-long drop in average profit rates that cannot be reversed by minor policy changes.

It is equally important to understand, however, that long-term trends in the world class struggle work in favor of working people. The world’s toilers are in a historically stronger position than ever before—through the growth and concentration of the working class as the population keeps shifting from the countryside to the urban centers, the continuing integration of women into the labor force, the internationalization of our class, and the growing weight of oppressed nationalities in working-class leadership. These developments are leading to deep-going trends such as the secularization of society and its positive consequences for the fight for women’s liberation and the possibilities for forging proletarian leadership.

In face of the unfolding world developments, liberal and radical forces have turned with greater zeal toward “lesser evilism”: electing Democrats in 2004 to “defeat Bush.” What working-class fighters need today is to be part of building a communist workers party that joins in the ongoing struggles of working people, systematically explains these facts, and charts a political course independent of the bosses’ parties, the Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. A course toward forging a revolutionary movement capable of leading workers and farmers to take political power away from the war-making class and into their own hands.
 
 
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