Washington has unleashed its armed forces in Iraq to maintain and increase its world domination in face of challenges by its imperialist rivals. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" has nothing to do with liberty or human rights--at least not for working people. It is about which of the imperialist powers will control the strategic oil and mineral platform Iraq and Kuwait sit on. It is also about propping up the U.S. dollar. All oil transactions by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for example, are carried out in U.S. dollars. Baghdad has been the only exception, using the euro at the prodding of the French regime. Tehran has also announced it is considering switching to the euro.

At the heart of the conflict is the interimperialist competition over redividing the world, as the capitalist system sinks into a prolonged depression. Washington and London, on one hand, and Paris and Berlin, on the other, are the main unstable poles. Paris as well as Berlin, "the sick man of Europe," have already been dealt major blows by U.S. imperialism. Washington has made it clear it will put in place a U.S. military occupation regime in Iraq, icing out competitors that profited handsomely from lucrative contracts in Iraq over the past 12 years.

In the process, many of the sacred post-World War II institutions of the "civilized West" are quickly beginning to crumble. Washington and Ankara, two NATO members, for example, will likely face off at the Iraqi-Turkish border if the government of Turkey sends troops into northern Iraq. The likelihood that the UN Security Council will be used again as an effective instrument for advancing imperialism’s interests has diminished.

Today’s events make it easier to see that the ultimate logic of the conflict is a march toward a third world war.

With the unfolding of the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has become one of most effective spokespeople for the U.S. ruling class. He seems to be winning the argument among the U.S. rulers that a smaller, more agile army going into battle with overwhelming force can win, enabling the U.S. empire to wage two major wars at once. This military strategy is essential for U.S. imperialism as Washington pursues a course toward more wars along its "axis of evil."

As the first body bags began to be filled with U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi army captured American prisoners, Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials cynically claimed that Baghdad, and the Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV network, were violating the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. That is the same government that has asserted its prerogative to maintain under indefinite detention--and without charges--hundreds of prisoners of war from Afghanistan at a concentration camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo--land stolen from the Cuban people by force. These men have been kept in tiny chicken cages, subjected to physical and psychological torture.

The imperialist invaders have acknowledged they have met stiffer resistance than they had led bourgeois public opinion believe was to be expected. Instead of welcoming the U.S. and British armies as liberators, many Iraqis have resisted the invasion. They defend their country’s sovereignty and should be supported by working people around the world. Some of them remember the brutality and plunder by the British colonial rulers before Iraq won its independence.

The imperialist invaders take advantage of the fact that the capitalist regime in Iraq today, which is based on a party-police state, cannot mobilize the toiling masses to protect their national sovereignty in face of the imperialist onslaught. Its toppling by Washington, however, will be a blow to working people.

U.S. imperialism is likely to score a relatively quick military victory in Iraq. But the outcome of the war won’t salvage the profit system from its downward slide in the curve of capitalism development. Irresolvable contradictions and conflicts will grow, and imperialist domination and brutality will engender new social explosions with unforeseen consequences. National liberation struggles may erupt out of the flames, as the Kurdish struggle did after the 1991 Gulf War.

Leading up to the start of the invasion, which Washington and London had carefully prepared over the past several months, millions around the world believed mass peace protests could somehow prevent the war. While pacifist illusions have not been and will not be shattered for many, there are young people and others who at first join peace protests thinking they are doing something effective to stop the horror of imperialist war. In the process, a number realize their approach is not effective and begin to search for one that is. Class-conscious workers can help by explaining the history of imperialism and its wars--including the first and second world slaughters--and that no antiwar protests have ever prevented such conflicts. Those seeking answers can learn how in October 1917, a social revolution in Russia was able to put an end to imperialist war through workers and farmers taking political power. Now is the moment for all those who become interested in these life-and-death questions for humanity to study and get out the facts together. Above all, what’s decisive is the workers who refuse to subordinate their struggles to "national unity" and "homeland defense." That is the beginning of resistance to imperialist war by our class, the only class that can stop the imperialist warmongers once and for all by taking power out of their hands, overturning capitalism, and joining the worldwide struggle to build a socialist society.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S.-led forces unleash bloody invasion of Iraq
Hundreds of Iraqis killed, maimed by rapidly advancing armies  
 
 
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