As part of their attempt to suppress the insurgency, American troops in Iraq have begun wrapping entire towns in barbed wire.  One such town, Abu Hishma, is encased in a razor-wire fence with only one way in or out.  Explaining this, Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander of the forces occupying Abu Hishma, said, "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them."  Such actions are a microcosm of the barbarism wrought by the Bush administration.  Bush has claimed to be combating terrorism while continuing to sponsor it, launched an imperialist war of aggression against Iraq, and waged a class war in favor of the rich.  These policies, while supported and implemented by Bush, are not all that new and are in fact the outcome of the social structure of American society.  It is not merely Bush's whim that brings these policies about, but the way American society is set up.

I. Terrorism

Bush constantly claims to be fighting a "war on terrorism;" that Americans are greatly threatened by terrorism and he's the man to protect us from it.  This raises an immediate contradiction: if we're in as much danger as Bush claims then obviously he hasn't been a very good protector.  The so-called "war on terrorism" is a myth, nothing more then a propaganda tool used to frighten the population into submission.  The United States has a long history of sponsoring terrorism that continues today.  Orlando Bosch admits to bombing a civilian Cuban airlines flight, killing 73 innocent people, yet he lives perfectly free in the US - which refuses to extradite him to Cuba or any other country. The US is also harboring the terrorist Emannuel Constant, who slaughtered 4,000 innocent Haitians, and refuses to extradite him to Haiti for trial.  The United States supports Pakistan, which sponsors terrorism against India.

The CIA has a long history of using and supporting terrorism, continuing to today.  It engaged in numerous assassinations, bombings, coups and other terrorist activities.  One of the worst terrorist attacks in recent Middle Eastern history was a car bomb detonated by CIA proxies in Lebanon, killing eighty civilians.  The CIA also launched dozens of assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. When Chilean voters committed the sin of electing a democratic socialist, Salvador Allende, President the CIA launched a terrorist campaign design to destabilize Chile including assassinations, arson, bombings and economic sabotage. It succeed; a CIA-backed coup overthrew Allende on September 11, 1973 and installed a brutal military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet complete with concentration camps.

In Georgia the United States maintains a terrorist training camp called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas). Graduates are responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Jesuit massacre in El Salvador, the La Cantuta massacre in Peru, the torture and murder of a UN worker in Chile, and hundreds of other terrorist actions. In April 2002 terrorists trained at this camp participated in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government in Venezuela.

The United States even supported Bin Laden and other Muslim Fundamentalist terrorists in Afghanistan called the Mujahadeen. Officially, this was in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - these "freedom fighters" were supposidely backed to expel Russian aggressors from Afghanistan. However, in 1998 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security advisor, admitted in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur that U.S. support for the Mujahadeen began prior to the Soviet invasion and was intended to provoke the Russians to invade, giving them "their Vietnam." He said:

"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. ... We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire."

The Mujahadeen assassinated Soviet officials, bombed civilian targets, threw acid in the faces of unveiled women and used many of the same terrorist tactics they now use against the U.S. Bin Laden joined their ranks in the mid-80s. The U.S. had no problem with these terrorists when their terrorism was directed against its enemies.

All of these actions, if carried out against the United States, would be called terrorism. If the United States were serious about fighting terrorism it would stop supporting terrorism - shut down the Western Hemisphere for Security Cooperation, abolish the CIA, etc.  That is the single most effective thing that can be done to stop terrorism. That it has not been done shows that this so-called "war on terrorism" is a myth.  In the hands of the American government the term "terrorism" has become little more than a term of abuse applied to virtually any group or organization the U.S. doesn't like. When they sponsors terrorism it is called "freedom fighting" or "counter-terrorism" or "pacification" or "counter-insurgency" or some other euphemism. The U.S. only condemns terrorism when it is directed against the U.S. or its client states/allies, otherwise is usually isn't even called terrorism.

Even groups which are not terrorists, but are opposed to the policies of the U.S. government, are often branded "terrorist" in order to demonize them and justify their persecution. FBI surveillance of demonstrators against the Iraq war was justified through scare stories about "terrorist infiltrators."  The Earth Liberation Front has been labeled terrorist, even though it hasn't killed, or attempted to kill, a single person. In Iraq, many suicide bombs and attacks against military targets have been described as "terrorism."  Terrorism is the targeting and killing of innocent civilians, suicide bombings or other attacks against military targets are not terrorism.  If attacking military targets is also terrorism then virtually all military action, virtually all violence, would be terrorism - a definition so broad that the term becomes meaningless.  The Earth Liberation Front engages in property destruction designed to reduce pollution and save the Earth.  Regardless of the ethics of these actions, it is not terrorism because they do not attempt to kill civilians.  If violating property rights were terrorism then the Underground Railroad (which violated property rights) would be an example of terrorism.  If the American revolution had happened today George Washington would be branded a domestic terrorist by the British.

The fake “war on terrorism” is a highly-effective propaganda device used by Bush and others to ram through their authoritarian agenda.  Dissent has been demonized as "unpatriotic" and “anti-American.”  Anything the government doesn't like gets labeled "terrorist" or "supporting terrorism."  The "war" is used as an excuse to justify any kind of military intervention, as in Iraq, simply by accusing the enemy of "supporting terrorism."  Opposing free trade has even been equated with supporting terrorism.

In the name of the "war on terrorism" civil liberties have been drastically decreased through a number of measures.  The PATRIOT Act, passed by congress with virtually no debate, gives the FBI the power to access your private medical, library, financial and student records without a warrant and to forbid anyone from telling you that they have accessed them.  It allows non-citizens to be jailed on mere suspicion, not actual evidence, and be denied re-admission to the United States if they have opinions the government doesn't like.  People convicted of no crime may be held indefinitely without any meaningful judicial review.  In addition to the PATRIOT act, secret military tribunals have been set up to try alleged "terrorists" without the right to a fair trial. Thousands of immigrants were "disappeared."  New attorney general guidelines allow spying on dissident organizations without any evidence of illegal activity.

Bush supporters defend this as "necessary" to stop "terrorism."  The same excuse has been used by many opponents of freedom throughout history, from Lenin to Hitler.  Lowering civil liberties wouldn't have stopped 9-11, but the FBI reading their own memos might have.  Planes sent to intercept the high-jacked airplanes were unusually delayed.  Some have argued that 9-11 was intentionally allowed to happen, but even if it wasn't the problem wasn't civil liberties but massive incompetence, a degree of incompetence that should be impeachable.

The "threat" of terrorism to Americans is greatly over-exaggerated and perceived as worse than it is due to sensationalistic & biased media coverage.  9-11 killed about 3,000 people.  The year before that no one on American soil was killed by anti-American terrorism.  None have been killed since.  About two million people are killed each year due to workplace accidents, far more than are killed by anti-American terrorism.  Over 3500 civilians and a greater number of soldiers were killed by the US attack on Afghanistan, more than were killed on 9-11.  The invasion of Iraq killed well over 8,000 civilians and a larger number of soldiers.  Tens of thousands in the United States die every year due to car accidents, far more than 9-11.  Yet there is no 'war on workplace accidents' or 'war on car accidents' even though the average American faces a much greater danger from these two than anti-American terrorism.

II. Iraq

Bush's attacks on freedom within the United States make a mockery of his claim to be promoting freedom in Iraq. If he wants to expand freedom then why is he restricting freedom? Apparently he has adopted the Orwellian slogan "freedom is slavery." The only freedom Bush advocates is the "freedom" of corporations to exploit people.

The United States did not invade Iraq to liberate it from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The United States supports many dictatorships just as bad as Saddam's Iraq. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and many other dictatorships are all supported by the U.S.  If Bush was really interested in freedom and democracy then he wouldn't be supporting them. The U.S. had no problem supporting Hussein in the 1980s - when he was committing his worst crimes. The US, and allies, sold him the WMDs Bush claimed they had . When Hussein "gassed his own people" (the Kurds) the US at first tried to blame it on Iran. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense at the time, and he had no problem with continued U.S. support of Hussein. Donald Rumsfeld was the U.S. special envoy to Iraq. None of these people have apologized for supporting Saddam or indicated that they regret their role in supporting his vicious tyranny.  When the US says it is imposing "democracy" or "freedom" on other countries that means it is really imposing a friendly regime subservient to Washington.

The U.S. has just replaced one dictator with another. Iraq is currently a dictatorship under U.S. ambassador Paul Bremer. There is also a "provisional governing council" made up of collaborators hand picked by the United States. It is a puppet of Bremer, just as the Iraqi parliament was a puppet of Hussein. Saddam's anti-union legislation has been kept on the books, demonstrations have been fired on, force has been used against unions, calls for free elections have been refused and press censorship has been implemented. Iraq is still ruled by "the whim of one brutal man," Bush just changed who that one brutal man is. The invasion of Iraq did not liberate Iraq, it just replaced one tyranny with another. If the US government really aimed to promote freedom & democracy it wouldn't have supporting Saddam (and other tyrants) in the first place, it wouldn't be imposing a military dictatorship in Iraq, and it would immediately cease its support for dictatorships in Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc. Apparently the US government thinks "liberation" means imposing a US puppet government.

Nor can the "threat of terrorism" or Iraq's alleged "Weapons of Mass Destruction" be used to justify the war. The United States isn't really fighting a "war on terrorism" and Colin Powell has admitted that there was no hard evidence linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda, a direct contradiction to what he was saying a year earlier. If Iraq actually had Weapons of Mass Destruction and were the danger Bush made it out to be then those WMDs would have been used against U.S. troops during the invasion. Bush has now downgraded his claim to "weapons of mass destruction related programs" - a far cry from what he was saying a year ago. The head of the U.S. weapons inspectors team, David Kay, admitted Iraq didn't have WMDs.  Despite his claim, we were not all wrong.  Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, argued before the invasion that Iraq did not have any WMDs left.

At a press conference on February 24th, 2001 Powell said Saddam Hussein, "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." Condoleezza Rice made similar comments the same year. Yet as soon as the drive to invade Iraq began they immediately reversed their story.

The original argument that Iraq had WMDs was based on fraud and lies.  Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Niger was proven a crude forgery.  In his February 5th, 2003 speech to the U.N. Powell cited an "intelligence dossier" released by the British government. That dossier was plagiarized from old magazine articles and a dissertation from Ibrahim al-Marashi, a post-graduate student at Monterrey Institute of International Studies. His dissertation was on Iraq's weapons capabilities in 1990, not in 2003. These forged and plagiarized documents indicate that this was not merely an intelligence screw up, they were actively fabricating evidence.

III. A Pattern of Aggression

All this is not merely the outcome of Bush's whim but of structural problems within American (and world) society. What the U.S. is doing in Iraq is not new, similar things have been done to numerous other countries by the United States repeatedly throughout its history. When the U.S. first started supporting Saddam's dictatorship Iraq was at war with Iran. In the the early '50s Iran was a multi-party parliamentary state with a relatively high degree of civil liberties, similar to the United Kingdom. Iranian nationalists, led by Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, won the elections and nationalized Iran's oil, previously owned by foreign corporations, putting Iran's oil under the control of Iranians. The US (& British) didn't like this, because it deprived US (& UK) corporations of profits, and so a CIA operation was launched to undermine Iran's parliamentary government. They launched a coup, overthrew the nationalists, and installed a brutal dictatorship under the Shah (King). The Shah slaughtered thousands, suppressed all opposition, sent death squads to murder dissidents, and committed numerous atrocities as bad as Saddam. In 1976 Amnesty International reported the Shah's CIA-trained security force, SAVAK, had the worst human rights record in the world. The Shah also privatized Iran's oil, selling it to foreign corporations (mostly US & British), and aligned Iran's foreign policy with the US. In 1978-79 the Iranian revolution erupted, overthrowing the Shah. Islamic Fundamentalists took advantage of the revolution to establish a theocratic republic, with Shiite Islam as the official religion. The new regime has similarities to Israel, it is an elected Muslim Republic just as Israel is an elected Jewish Republic. Saddam Hussein came to power at about the same time and took advantage of the revolution to launch an invasion against Iran, hoping to gain territory for Iraq. The U.S. supported Iraq's aggression in the hopes of toppling the Iranian government and restoring an American satellite state.  The US also covertly supplied Iran with weapons in order to establish links with the military, which might have lead to a coup against the Muslim Republic.  The US supplied weapons to Chile under Allende for the same reason.

Iran isn't the only country to suffer from a CIA sponsored coup. In 1950 Jacobo Arbenz won a free and fair election in Guatemala. His platform was, "to transform our nation from a backward nation with a predominantly feudal economy to a modern capitalist country; and ... to accomplish this transformation in a manner that brings the greatest possible elevation of the living standards of the great masses of the people." He implemented a program of social reforms, including land reform. As part of the land reform the government appropriated some unused land from the United Fruit Company, a U.S. corporation, for which they were compensated. The US government and media demonized the Arbenz government as "Communist" even though he openly advocated capitalism. During the cold war almost any country the US didn't like was demonized as "Communist" regardless of its actual politics, just as enemies today are demonized as "terrorists." In the run up to it's coup Iran was also demonized as a "Communist dictatorship" even though Mossadegh opposed the Soviets and helped expel their troops from Iran. The CIA launched a campaign against Arbenz and a small army of 300 terrorists were hired to destabilize and overthrow him. In June 1954 unmarked CIA planes launched air raids on the capitol and dropped leaflets demanding Arbenz's resignation. Arbenz was forced to resign and fled the country. Castillo Armas arrived at the capitol in a US embassy plane and was installed as president by the CIA. Armas repealed Arbenz's reforms and launched a reign of terror against supporters of Arbenz. Over the next several decades over 100,000 people were murdered and a series of US-backed military dictatorships ruled the country. A series of guerilla movements, mostly advocating state socialism and/or liberation theology, arose to fight against the military dictatorships but were ruthlessly suppressed by the government with US assistance. Right-wing death squads slaughtered civilians en masse, often moving into villages, shooting, burning or beheading all the inhabitants they could find and using helicopters to machine gun the survivors as they fled. US Green Berets and planes sometimes assisted suppression of the rebels, dropping napalm on peasants.

A similar fate befell Congo. In 1960 Congo won its independence from Belgium. The nationalist Patrice Lumumba became its first prime minister. He advocated a neutral stance in the Cold War, keeping Congo out of both the US and Soviet camps. A few months later a CIA supported coup overthrew Lumumba and put General Mobutu in power, who renamed the country Zaire. Mobutu, who was extremely corrupt even by the standards of US-backed dictators, gave life sentences to protestors for "insulting the president," put dissidents in mental hospitals, and suppressed religious and press freedoms. Lumumba was tracked down, tortured, shot in the head and his body dumped in hydrochloric acid.

The CIA did the same thing to Indonesia. In 1965 a CIA-backed coup deposed President Sukarno and put into power General Suharto. Sukarno was also a nationalist who wanted Indonesia to stay neutral in the Cold War. In the immediate aftermath of the coup between 500,000 and one million people were slaughtered by the dictatorship. The CIA provided the government with lists of dissidents for it to eliminate. A decade after this coup Indonesia invaded neighboring East Timor with US support. Between a fourth and a third of the population of East Timor were murdered in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. The US sold them the weapons to do it and continued to back Suharto throughout the genocide.

The US doesn't only back invasions by its puppet governments, as in East Timor, but also carries out invasions of its own. Nicaragua was invaded and occupied by US troops in 1912, a situation similar to Iraq today. The troops were temporarily withdrawn in 1925, but a rebellion erupted against the US puppet government so the troops were called back in in 1926. In the later period of the occupation insurgents led by Augusto Sandino (a nationalist and anarchist sympathizer), began organizing guerilla warfare against US troops to force them out. The US responded by building up a puppet dictatorship under the Somoza dynasty with a powerfull US-trained national guard and withdrawing its troops in 1933. The Somozas' national guard suppressed the rebellions and maintained control of the country for the US.

The Somozas continued to rule Nicaragua until the late 1970s when they were overthrown by a guerilla war waged by the Sandinista Front For National Liberation (Sandinistas). The Sandinista government implemented a mixed economy and a higher degree of civil liberties compared to its predecessor and most surrounding states (though it was not without abuses). In the later days of the Somoza dynasty the US moved towards replacing the Somozas with a different puppet dictatorship, "Somocismo without Somoza," but this failed. When Somoza fled the country the Carter administration flew out commanders of the national guard on airplanes with Red Cross markings. These commanders were used to form the nucleus of a US-trained and funded terrorist army, later called the Contras, which was used to start another civil war in Nicaragua and undermine the Sandinistas. The Contras were trained by the US to attack "soft targets," schools, health centers, farms and the like, and succeeded in devastating much of the country. In the run up to the 1988 elections the US publicly announced that it's embargo and support for the Contras would continue unless the electorate voted the Sandinistas out of office and the US backed candidates in. With this threat hanging over their head the Sandinistas were voted out. The US government and media called this a "free election." It wasn't really free because it was coerced through the threat of US-backed terrorism. If an Eastern European country had become independent of the USSR and the Russians responded to this by launching a terrorist war against it and publicly declaring that they had better vote for the Communist party or the USSR would continue to attack that country only a hardline Stalinist would consider it a "free election." Yet when the US does the same thing to Nicaragua it is called a "free election."

Haiti was also occupied by US troops from 1915-1934, an occupation which also has similarities to Iraq today. US marines broke into the national treasury and stole all the gold, shipping it to the First National City Bank in New York. The corvee, forced labor, was resurrected. Haitian peasants were forced, at gun point, to construct railroads, buildings, roads and other infrastructure for US companies and the neocolonial administration. A guerilla war erupted against the US occupiers which US troops brutally suppressed. The US herded Haitians into concentration camps and committed many atrocities, including the 1929 massacre of 264 protesting peasants in Les Cayes. American troops raped Haitian women with impunity. The US has repeatedly intervened in Haiti after the end of the occupation to ensure the continuation of US domination.

Haiti is on one part of the island of Hispaniola, the other part is ruled by the Dominican Republic. In 1916 the Dominican government refused to accept broader US control over it's internal affairs and so the US invaded. US troops occupied the country until 1924, implemented censorship, and disbanded the Dominican congress in favor of the the naked rule of the US military. A guerilla war erupted against the US occupation which the US suppressed, committing many atrocities. After American troops were removed the US backed the rise to power of Rafael Trujillo, who established a corrupt military dictatorship. In a 1930 election Trujillo won with more vote than there were registered voters. Eventually controlling three-fifths of the Dominican economy, Trujillo grew so corrupt that it interfered with US investment. When the Cuban revolution looked like it would triumph the US began to worry that Trujillo's excesses might inspire a similar revolution in the Dominican Republic. In May 1961 US supplied dissidents assassinated him. In 1962 elections resulted in Juan Bosch coming to power. Bosch was pro-business and anti-communist but committed to establishing a "decent democratic regime" and implementing land reform, low-rent housing public works projects and other reforms. A CIA coup overthrew him a few months after winning the election. In 1965 an attempted counter-coup to restore Bosch to power resulted in a civil war. When it looked like the rebels might win the US invaded and suppressed the rebels. The invasion was followed by a series of repressive regimes, backed by the US.

The neighboring island of Cuba has been repeatedly invaded by the United States. From 1896-98 Cuba, a Spanish colony, fought a war for independence against Spain. During this period relations between Spain and the United States became strained. In February 1898 the U.S.S. Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana harbor. The American press immediately blamed the Spanish, even though there was no evidence of Spanish involvement, and war fever swept the country under the slogan "Remember the Maine." The cause of the Maine's explosion remains unknown to this day, some have speculated that it was a covert US operation intended to create a pretext for a US attack against Spain and others have said that it was an accident brought about by a coal bunker fire. Whatever the actual cause, it was used as an excuse for a US war against Spain, which Spain quickly lost. The US claimed it intended to liberate Spain's colonies, including Cuba, but it instead took them over after driving out the Spanish. The war with Spain and peace negotiations were conducted without consulting the Cuban independence movement and most major leaders of the Cuban independence movement, fearing that the US would take over the island, opposed US entry into the war. After the Spanish were driven out, US troops occupied the island until 1902. Cuba was made a republic, but the US inserted the infamous Platt amendment into it's constitution, which limited Cuba's ability to make foreign policy &  to borrow money abroad, gave the US a naval base at Guantanamo Bay and gave the US the right to intervene in Cuba - making Cuba a virtual US protectorate. The Cuban Republic became extremely corrupt, setting a pattern which would last in Cuba for fifty years. In 1906 a rebellion erupted and the US sent troops to suppress it, starting another occupation of Cuba which lasted until 1909. Judge Charles Magoon, from Minnesota, was appointed to preside over a provisional government. Magoon institutionalized Cuba's growing corruption, using it as a mechanism of control and dividing patronage among Cuba's contending factions to prevent further factional violence. Cuba became a two-party Republic. There were no real ideological differences between the two parties, they were just competing over who should enjoy the spoils of office.

In 1917 another rebellion erupted, and US troops again occupied the island until 1923. The year after US troops left Gerardo Machado y Morales, formerly the vice president of an American owned utility in Havana, won the Presidential election. Machado increased political assassinations, had strikers fired on and won reelection in 1928 by outlawing the opposition party. His secret police routinely murdered his opponents by throwing them to the sharks in Havana harbor. Unrest against Machado's dictatorship grew until 1933 when he was forced to flee the island. The new government began implementing reforms that threaten US investments on the island but the US sent warships to Havana and backed the seizure of power by Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar. Batista's dictatorship lasted until the 1940s, when he retired. In a US supported 1952 coup Batista seized power again. Batista's second dictatorship faced increasing unrest from many factions, including a guerilla movement lead by Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, and was overthrown in January 1959. At first the US was not completely hostile towards the revolution, they were willing to replace Batista with another puppet dictator. But the new government threatened US investment, by nationalizing foreign owned companies among other things, and relations between the two countries deteriorated. The US launched an attempted invasion, using a CIA trained army of exiles, at the Bay of Pigs which completely failed. US hostility towards Cuba drove it into the hands of the Soviets. Prior to seizing power Castro was more of a nationalist then a Communist, he wasn't a Marxist-Leninist. With the US hostile towards him and the Soviets offering aid Castro converted to Marxism-Leninism, turned Cuba into a soviet client state and implemented a Red Fascist dictatorship, complete with state-capitalism (nationalized industry), persecution of homosexuals, gulags and suppression of dissidents (including left-wing radicals). The US imposed an embargo on Cuba and launched a terrorist campaign against it including dozens of assassination attempts on Castro, bombings and infiltration of enemy agents into Cuba.

In the Spanish-American war the US also conquered and annexed the Philippines from Spain. The Philippines also had a nationalist movement which was previously fighting Spain for independence. They didn't want to go from one colonial master to another and launched a guerilla war against the US, led by the nationalist Emilio Aguinaldo. The suppression of this insurgency by the United States cost far more money and far more lives than the Spanish-American war. The US responded to the rebellion with state terrorism - setting up concentration camps, torturing and mutilating prisoners, massacring civilians, plundering and burning down villages, raping women and many other atrocities. Sergeant Howard McFarland, a soldier stationed in the Philippines during the war, wrote to the Fairfield Journal of Maine that, "this is a very rich country; and we want it. My way of getting it would be to put a regiment into a skirmish line, and blow every nigger into a nigger heaven. On Thursday, March 29, eighteen of my company killed seventy-five nigger bolomen and ten of the nigger gunners.... When we find one that is not dead, we have bayonets." L. F. Adams, a soldier in the Washington regiment fighting in the war, described the scene in the aftermath of a battle: "In the path of the Washington Regiment and Battery D of the Sixth Artillery there were 1,008 dead niggers, and a great many wounded. We burned all their houses. I don't know how many men, women, and children the Tennessee boys did kill. They would not take any prisoners." One of the more famous atrocities was the Moro massacre, in which US troops slaughtered at least 900 men, women and children.  Emilio Aguinaldo was captured in 1901 but the US wasn't able to fully suppress the insurgency until 1913. The Philippines remained a US colony until 1946, when the US granted independence but supported a series of corrupt puppet governments, including the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

The conquest of the Philippines extended American power into Asia. Fifty years later the US continued to exert that power in it's assault on Laos.  In 1958 leftists, including the Pathet Lao, won the only truly free elections in the history of Laos, so the US proceeded to subvert and overthrow the government.  Over the next several years Laotian governments came and went at a frantic pace with a series of CIA coups and counter-coups.  Starting in the late 50s the CIA started recruiting a mercenary army consisting of about 40,000 men to attack the Pathet Lao (when other countries do that the US calls it terrorism).  Eventually this drove much of the population into the hands of authoritarian communists and lead to a civil war, with the Pathet Lao facing off against a right-wing dictatorship supported by the US.  The Pathet Lao later received aid from North Vietnam, which hoped to force the US out of Laos so that the US could no longer use it as a base from which sabotage teams and other forces could attack North Vietnam.  As the Pathet Lao advanced the US stepped up it's attacks, launching massive bombings against the country.  Between 1965 and 1975 the United States dropped over two million tons of bombs on Laos, more than all sides had dropped in World War Two.  This didn't stop the Pathet Lao from coming to power and implementing a Leninist dictatorship, but it did utterly devastate their society.  This war was kept secret, not to stop the Laotians from finding out (they knew they were being bombed), but to keep it from the American public, which might have objected to bombing whole villages out of existence.

IV. Imperialism

What all these US interventions show is that what the US is doing to Iraq is not an anomaly but the latest in a long historical trend that goes back before even the Spanish-American war, to the Mexican-American war and the extermination of the Native Americans.  The invasion of Iraq is not merely the result of Bush's whim, but the outcome of the structure of American society and it's interaction with the rest of the globe.  The United States has been pursuing an expansionist and imperialist foreign policy for over 150 years.  Imperialism is a social relationship in which the rulers of a state dominate the population of another country or territory.  An empire is a state which engages in imperialism on a wide scale in many different areas - such as the British, Soviet, German or Roman empires.  All of these American interventions have the effect of the US forcing it's will on other countries (ie. dominating them) and hence are instances of imperialism.  The United States is an empire because it practices imperialism on a wide scale, from Haiti to the Philippines to Iraq.

One of the driving forces behind American imperialism is neocolonialism.  Neocolonialism is a social relation in which an imperialist nation economically exploits subordinate nation(s) that are formally independent.  The subordinate nation is officially independent with it's own nation-state but is economically dependant on an imperialist nation which exploits it. An indigenous elite controls the state but the economy (most industry, resources, etc.) is still predominantly controlled by foreign capitalists. This is a form of economic imperialism. This is different from old-fashioned formal (traditional) colonialism in which the subordinated countries do not have political independence.  Sometimes the United States uses formal colonialism, as in the Philippines, but in recent history it has mainly relied on neocolonialism.  Generally neocolonialism means that multinational corporations from the imperialist nation control a substantial portion of the economy of the subordinate nation(s), which are oriented towards the needs of the imperialist country.

Many of these interventions helped US investment in the countries the US intervened in, both by protecting already existing investments and by making conditions for further investment more profitable.  One of the main goals of US foreign policy is to create and maintain a favorable investment climate for American companies in other countries, typically through establishing and protecting neocolonialism in that country.  Different parts of the world serve different functions but the overall goal is to subordinate other countries to the needs of US investors.  If another country deviates too far from this then the US will attempt to overthrow their government and install a regime which will go along with US desires.  This can be a multi-party republic with high civil liberties or a brutal dictatorship with concentration camps, so long as it doesn't deviate too far from this goal.  The US installs what are called client states throughout the world.  A client state, also called a puppet government or satellite state, is a state which is dominated by another state.  The United States is not the only empire to have client states, many past empires have had client states.  The Soviet empire had many client states in eastern Europe and elsewhere, the Roman empire had an extensive system of client states and the Nazi empire also had several client states.  The US makes it's client states implement policies favorable to American corporations, such as keeping labor costs low, opening markets to US companies, and granting access to & control over natural resources.  The US maintains control over it's client states through a variety of mechanisms.  Military force, economic sanctions, and the CIA can be used against states that deviate too far from Washington's desires.  Foreign aid can be used as an incentive to make client states obey.  Military aid allows the US to establish useful links with the military of other countries; if the military can be bought to your side often they'll overthrow disobedient governments for you.  Often it is in the interests of the local elite to go along with US desires; they can enrich themselves by helping the US exploit the population, this is one reason why American client states often have a high degree of corruption.  In addition they can gain many other advantages by going along with US desires, such as US assistance in repressing rebellion, defense from foreign attacks and other things.

When Cuba was first invaded the US had over $50 million invested, a large amount for the time, which was threatened by the instability brought on by the war for independence.  After the invasion, the Platt Amendment to Cuba's constitution assured American businesses protection and a generally favorable investment climate, leading even more American investment to flow in.  By 1913 American investment in Cuba had risen to $200 million.  The American occupation of Haiti forced Haiti to allow foreigners to own land and saw US companies grab up the most fertile areas of the country, leading to the domination of agriculture by US businesses.  Forced labor was used to build infrastructure to service American-owned companies.  The US occupation of the Dominican Republic was partly intended to defend American investments in that country, including the many American owned sugar plantations and the investments of the American-owned Santo Domingo Improvement Company.  The reformist Arbenz government in Guatemala, which the CIA overthrew, was implementing reforms which threatened the profits of the United Fruit Company, which had many investments in the country.  Both the heads of the CIA and the State Department at the time, the brothers John Dulles and Allen Dulles, previously worked for the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell - which represented the United Fruit Company.  The coup in Iran gave US (and British) companies ownership over Iran's oil - a very lucrative commodity.  East Timor also has significant oil reserves.  The Congo has many profitable minerals, including diamonds and tantalum.

This typically has a profoundly detrimental effect on ordinary people living in those countries.  The standard of living in Cuba dropped immensely as the result of American imperialism.  Workers were kept at subsistence levels, deeply indebted, with low wages and in constant fear of eviction.  Small farmers were ruined and the latifunda expanded.  As a result of US imperialism Haiti today is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, even the CIA admits about 80% of the population lives in abject poverty.  In the Dominican Republic sweatshops are rampant and more than a fifth of Dominicans live below the poverty line.  Guatemala,  Nicaragua, Indonesia, the Philippines and many other victims of US imperialism all suffer from large-scale poverty, sweatshops and general misery.  Imperialism and empires mean death and misery on a large scale.

Neocolonialism is not the only function of American imperialism.  The US also acts to defend and expand it's power over the rest of the world, bringing more power under it's control and intensifying control over that territory.  This is often necessary in order to implement neocolonialism - if the US has less power it may be unable to impose neocolonialism on other countries or prevent other countries from throwing US neocolonialism out.  For example, US invasions of the Caribbean islands (Haiti, Cuba, etc.) gave the US bases from which it could use to further it's control over the Caribbean, force other empires out, and expand it's power to areas beyond the Caribbean.

The US must also combat the threat of a good example.  If a country breaks off from the American empire and becomes prosperous, or at least more prosperous than it was under US domination, then this can potentially inspire other countries to also throw off US imperialism and become independent of the American Empire.  This process can potentially lead to losing large areas of the empire or even the complete break up of the empire.  Hence it is necessary to suppress any attempt to throw off US domination, even if the country attempting to do it has few US investments or strategic value.  This is even more true of tiny, extremely poor countries since if even a tiny, extremely poor country can do it then the larger, wealthier countries will think, if even a tiny country can do it why can't we?  If you're going to maintain an empire you can't just let pieces of it float off.  By the 1970s Nicaragua wasn't that important to the US economy, if the country disappeared few US corporations would have noticed.  But the overthrow of the Somozas by the Sandinistas in 1979 threatened to inspire similar revolts throughout the region and so had to be destroyed, which is why the US backed the Contra terrorists.  The US did have investments in Chilean copper when Salvador Allende won the elections but the American economy wasn't going to implode if Chile became independent.  The real threat was that the victory of Democratic Socialism in Chile would inspire it to spread to other countries, eventually undermining a good portion of the empire, which is why the CIA overthrew it in another of it's coups.  Part of the reason the Congo and Indonesia experienced CIA coups was because of this - Lumumba and Sukarno were both nationalists who sought to make their countries politically and economically independent, which threatened to inspire other countries to do the same.  The US supported the imposition of Marcos's dictatorship in the Philippines for similar reasons, it feared that the Philippines might throw US neocolonialism out.

If a country cannot be prevented from throwing off US domination then it is necessary to devastate that country, to insure that it does not become prosperous.  If the country isn't better off after throwing the US out then it will not inspire many people to also rebel against the empire.  If it is worse off then it will act as a deterrent, warning others of the costs of defying the US.  Thus after the Cuban revolution the US imposed sanctions and launched a series of terrorist campaigns against the island.  After the Iranian revolution the US launched several attacks against Iran and backed Saddam's attack against the country.  When the US was unable to prevent the Pathet Lao from coming to power in Laos the US devastated the country through massive bombings.  All of these failed to overturn the defiant governments and install an American client state, but they did succeed in damaging these countries and thereby limiting their potential to inspire further rebellions against the American empire.

In addition, the arms industry can make lots of money from wars and imperialism, even if the war serves no strategic purpose and no US investments are involved.   The military industrial complex, a powerful coalition of military and business leaders who make profits by selling weapons to the government, thus creates constant pressure for the US to wage war against other countries.  Imperialism and wars generate substantial profits for them and are necessary in order to justify the large military budget which further fattens the profits of arms manufacturers.  This leads to a powerful expansionist tendency in American foreign policy.

The military industrial complex, the threat of a good example, neocolonialism and imperialism in general are the immediate driving forces behind US foreign policy.  Many interventions are the result of more than one of these, including the war in Iraq.  The weapons industry has made billions off the war.  The occupation and installation of a client state in Iraq allow the US to expand it's bases into another oil-rich country in an oil rich region.  This makes the US less dependant on bases elsewhere in the region, including Saudi Arabia, and makes it a little easier for the US to strike at enemies and dominate the region.  Iraq's oil is important both for the purposes of neocolonialism and for control over the world.  Now that a US client state has been installed in Iraq, Washington has control over all of Iraq’s oil and Iraq has the second largest oil fields in the world.  The idea isn't necessarily to increase the amount of oil produced (at present the US can get all the oil it needs from non-Middle Eastern sources) but more to make sure Washington has control over the majority of oil being produced.  Europe, Canada, East Asia and the U.S. all are dependent on foreign oil to fuel their economies, the country that controls their oil will have great influence over them.  By ensuring that oil markets are dominated by the U.S., Washington not only ensures that U.S. companies will reap the profits from extracting and selling oil to the rest of the globe, but it also gives the Washington control over one of the world's main energy sources - putting the United States in a position of great power.

The US puppet government in Iraq is implementing policies very favorable to US corporations, although thus far the resistance has limited the degree to which it has done so.  In June 2003 American ambassador Paul Bremer, the US-appointed dictator of Iraq, called for Iraq to deregulate so as to encourage "private investment" (ie. foreign investment), revise it's commercial laws to encourage "private investment," lift "unreasonable" restrictions on property rights, open Iraq's markets to foreign competitors, and a host of other policies which will serve to make Iraq economically dependant on foreign powers.  In September Iraq's new finance minister called for privatization of Iraq's state industries within two years, allowing foreign companies to buy up Iraq's economy.  Even without selling off Iraq's state assets, the US has control of Iraq's government and thus control the large public sector of the economy.  On September 19, 2003 Bremer issued the infamous Order 39, which privatizes 200 Iraqi companies, decrees that foreign companies can own 100% of Iraqi banks, mines and factories, and allows those companies to move 100% of their profits out of the country.  Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton (which Vice President Dick Cheney used to be CEO of) was granted a contract encompassing the operation of Iraqi oil fields, including pumping and distributing Iraqi oil.  The contract was awarded without any kind of bidding process, they just gave it to Halliburton.  Halliburton has also been accused of overcharging for it's services.  Betchel received a no-bid contract to work on Iraq's infrastructure worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  The extremely anti-union Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) was awarded a contract to work on the Umm Qasr port.  The Iraqi government, a puppet of the US, can borrow billions of dollars to but only by mortgaging the national oil revenues through a bank managed by American-based multinational JP Morgan Chase.  This will potentially shackle any future Iraqi government with major debts to mostly Western bankers.  Iraq's banking system is effectively being taken over by foreign companies.  First the US destroys Iraq's economy, then US corporations make a bundle "reconstructing" it.  To describe all of this as "reconstruction" is not entirely correct.  Reconstruction implies rebuilding what was previously being destroyed but what the US is doing is not rebuilding Iraq's old economy but creating something different, an economy geared towards corporate capitalism and the needs of American Big Business.

Bush claims that "we have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire," but even if he isn't lying (which he probably is) and believes what he says, it doesn't matter.  The opening of the soviet archives have shown that many soviet officials honestly believed that they were bringing 'people's democracies' to the areas they conquered.  By forcing other countries to adopt the policies he desires, whether he calls them "democracy" or something else, Bush is dominating other countries and establishing an empire.  That's what domination and empires are; if you act like an empire you are an empire.  These are the outcomes of his policies whether he wants it or not.  The content of those policies, in turn, are driven not merely by Bush's whims but by the social structure of American society which creates a powerful pressure for imperialism that no politician can resist.

V. Capitalism and the State

Most of this doesn't benefit the average American.  In many cases the costs of imperialism to the imperialist nation are greater than the potential benefits to the imperialist nation.  The cost of the war and occupation in Iraq will probably exceed what US neocolonialism can make from it.  The reason for this is that the people who pay the costs of imperialism are not the same people who benefit from it.  The military, big business and the state are all centralized, hierarchical institutions with a minority on the top making the decisions and commanding the majority below them.  Those at the top of these institutions, who hold most of the power in American society, make up what sociologist C. Wright Mills called the power elite.  It is this power elite that mainly benefits from American imperialism; benefits to the ordinary American are small or none at all.  The costs of imperialism is paid for by taxing the general population but only a minority of the population gets the benefits.  The corporations who will make money in Iraq and through selling arms are predominantly owned and controlled by a small, wealthy group of people.  Today many conservatives and some liberals make a big deal out of how more Americans are owning stocks in companies but ownership is still extremely concentrated.  Although about half of Americans own stocks the richest 5% of stockowners own 95% of all stocks, and actual power over what corporations do is even more concentrated.  Thus the vast majority of profits gained through imperialism go to big business, not average Americans.  The war in Iraq is a net wealth transfer from Iraqis and ordinary Americans to rich Americans.

The state usually acts in the interests of the wealthy, such as by engaging in imperialism, for several reasons.  The state is a hierarchical organization with a monopoly (or near-monopoly) of legitimate violence.  It is based on centralization of power, with a few on the top giving orders to the majority on the bottom. It maintains armed bodies of people (police, military) and coercive institutions (prisons, courts) which it uses to force all within it's territory to obey it.  Because of this monopoly of force and centralization of power all states are instruments by which a minority dominates the majority.  Power lies with a small number of people in the upper levels of the state hierarchy, the state elite, who dominate the rest of the population.  This can be a monarchy, an elected republic or any other kind of state but in all cases a small group of people in the upper levels of the hierarchy hold decision making power.  This state elite constitutes one section of the power elite.

The United States is a class society.  Class is economic hierarchy, a social relation in which some have power over others in economics.  Those on top are called the ruling class.  The kind of class system the United States practices is corporate capitalism, other forms of class society include slavery and manorialism.  Capitalism is an economic system based on wage-labor in which the majority of the population must sell their labor to survive.  This majority that must sell their labor to survive are called the working class.  The means of production (factories, mines, land, etc. used to produce things) are controlled mainly by another class, the capitalist class.  The working class does not own the means of production and so must sell their labor in order to survive.  Members of the capitalist class use their ownership of the means of production to gain immense wealth for themselves.  In corporate capitalism the economy is organized mainly by corporations; the capitalist class takes the form of a corporate elite, those on the top who control big business.  This is another section of the power elite.

In some societies the state and the ruling class are identical.  This was the case in the USSR where a ruling class of bureaucrats enriched themselves at the expense of those below them.  In other societies the ruling class is officially separate from the state.  A state elite runs the state and an economic elite runs the economy, the organization of each is formally separate.  In such societies the state usually, but not always, tends to act in the interests of the economic elite/ruling class.  This is because the interests of the state elite and the economic elite usually coincide, they share common interests.  They share a broad interest in keeping the working class subordinated and at work in the existing economy.  They are both on the top of the hierarchy; it is in both their interests to insure that the rest of the population stays subordinate to them - if they do not then the state & ruling class are quickly overthrown.  By acting in the interests of the economic elite the state improves it's own position.  The state elite protects and enhances the ability of the economic elite to exploit both domestic and foreign working classes.  Members of the state elite can then leech off the profits extracted by the economic elite through taxes, bribes, or other means.  A productive economy capable of maximizing the exploitation of the working classes can also be used by the state to achieve it's goals by funding its' programs, building things to be used by the state, producing war materials, etc.  It can be better mobilized for war to defend and expand the state's power.  Neocolonialism can expand the state's power by giving it's nationals control over another country's economy, further subordinating that country.

In the Untied States we are taught that we live in a democratic society, that the majority controls the government through voting and that our government expresses the will of the people, not the will of the rich & powerful.  The same belief is taught in North Korea, China, Syria, Egypt and almost every other country in the world.  In none of these countries has elections resulted in the control of the state by the majority.  All states are based on centralization of power, with a few at the top making decisions for the majority to obey.  They are thus inherently instruments of minority rule and cannot be used to enforce majority rule, even if majority rule were desirable.  In an elected government those at the top (Presidents, Prime Ministers, members of Congress or Parliament, etc.) are elected, but those at the top constitute a minority of the population.  It is this minority at the top who makes the decisions, who pass the laws and whatnot, not the majority who elected them.  Thus the state is still an instrument of minority rule even in an elected government because it is a minority of the population that actually makes the decisions.

In addition, once elected representatives are not tied in any substantial way to the policies they professed to advocate in order to win election.  Representatives can take whatever position they want, regardless of what they said during the election or what their constituents want.  They are isolated from the general public but subjected to intense pressures from big business and the state bureaucracy.  This leads them to act in the interests of the elite, not the majority.

The corporate elite can distort elections by using their extreme wealth to support their favored candidates.  This gives politicians who are rich, or who have the backing of the rich, an extreme advantage over those without it since they can buy more ads, make more campaign stops, etc.  The control over the media by corporations means that any candidate which the corporate elite as a whole does not like will not get much positive media coverage.  Look how much media coverage the campaign of the Socialist Party, USA or many other anti-corporate parties got in the last election.  And if both of these fail, any government that doesn't do what the corporate elite wants will face massive capital flight.  The economy will thus crash until the government returns to pursuing what the corporate elite wants.  If the government does not cave in this usually results in it being elected out at the next election, and a pro-corporate party coming to power.  More than one government has been cowed in this manner - Britain's labor government in the '70s is one of many examples.  Capital flight can also be a means of controlling weaker countries subject to US neocolonialism, if the government gets disobedient the multinationals can withdraw their investments and send the economy in a downward spiral.

Hypothetically a government could defeat capital flight by nationalizing industries subject to capital flight; this is what many "third world" countries attempting to throw off neocolonialism do.  However, doing so requires that the upper levels of the state bureaucracy be willing to go along with nationalization.  For reasons discussed above, this elite in the top levels of the state hierarchy often (but not always) act in the interests of the corporate elite because it is usually in their interests to do so.  If elected politicians decide to do something (nationalize industry or something else) which the state bureaucracy does not like there are a variety of mechanisms it can use to subvert their decisions.  The most extreme is a coup, where the elected politicians are simply overthrown by the state bureaucracy (usually the military).  This is what happened to Allende when he tried to nationalize industry in Chile.  The CIA has launched many coups in other countries that attempted to nationalize industry or do other things which they did not like; they are quite capable of doing the same domestically if they had to.  Usually such extreme methods aren't required; most politicians can be pressured into compliance without overthrowing them.  Elected politicians come and go but the bureaucracy is permanent, which tends to give the bureaucrats more power than the elected representatives.  Black ops, disinformation, bureaucratic slowdowns, media manipulation and many other tactics have historically been used by state bureaucracies against elected politicians.  The state bureaucracy can also suppress groups attempting to bring about change they don't like through electoral channels or otherwise.  The FBI's infamous Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) starting in the late '50s suppressed many domestic groups working for social change, including civil rights groups, anti-war groups, the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.  The US government carried out extensive repression against the Socialist Party from the US entrance in World War One until the early twenties including jailing Socialist activists, censoring Socialist publications and rigging elections to insure the Socialists couldn't win.  Their Presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, was imprisoned yet still managed to get a million votes.  This kind of repression can be used to prevent any group which advocates policies the state bureaucracy does not like from winning elections.

In the United States both sections of the power elite, the corporate elite and the state elite, tend to overlap and intermingle.  Individuals in powerful government positions, both elected and appointed, can often gain lucrative positions in the private economy after leaving office.  There is a "revolving door" of individuals going from powerful government positions to lucrative positions in the private economy and back again.  Before becoming Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, before that he was secretary of defense under Bush the first.  National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice used to be a director for Chevron.  George Bush also used to be an executive in an oil company.  Forty-one members of the administration have ties with the oil industry.  The percentage of millionaires in Congress is thousands of times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population.  All of this gives individuals in powerful government positions to promote the interests of Big Business because by doing so they make themselves richer, even if it financially stresses the government as a whole.

Elections are very useful in controlling the population because they create the impression that power lies with "the people" and thus subdues people who otherwise might rebel against the government.  Real power lies with big business and the state bureaucracy, not "the people."  The way the system is set up elected representatives must do more or less the same thing given the same situation, regardless of what their election platform is.  When Bush was running for election in 2000 he said he would pursue a less aggressive foreign policy, he would not engage in "nation-building," but once in power he has obviously pursued a very aggressive foreign policy.

Changing the situation, however, can force the power elite, and thus elected politicians, to change their actions.  The existence of the power elite is not some giant conspiracy controlling everything but the outcome of a society organized along hierarchical lines, with a small group of people on top.  Because those in the upper levels of the hierarchy share common interests and are in a similar situation they tend to act in similar ways towards the rest of the population.  Their actions and views are not identical, however.  A spectrum of views exists within the power elite.  Certain policies can cause results which harm the interests of the power elite, such as loosing areas of the empire, domestic unrest or increased popularity of revolutionary ideologies (which threaten to overthrow the power elite).  Members of the power elite evaluate the costs and benefits of these actions and come to different conclusions.  Popular movements can force the power elite to alter behavior and grant concessions, such as social programs or not invading certain countries, by changing the situation and raising the costs to the power elite of certain actions.

VI. Class Warfare

This tendency of the state to act in the interests of the wealthy exists not only in foreign policy, where the state pursues an imperialist policy designed to benefit the elite, but also in domestic policy where it wages class war against the working class.  Bush's tax cuts mainly favors the wealthy, shifting the burden further away from those with the most money, and widening the gap between rich and poor.  The US spends over $100 billion a year on corporate welfare - subsidies, grants, etc. to the wealthy and big business.  In addition the military-industrial complex acts as a huge subsidy to big business, not only by directly funding arms corporations but also by developing advanced technology.  The state pays for research and development via the military industrial complex and if the results of that research (such as the internet) prove profitable the private sector takes it over and reaps the profit.  The public pays the cost, the rich reap the benefit.  Some Keynesians defend all this as necessary to "create jobs" but that kind of logic can be used to justify any sort of government spending.  Having the government pay people to dig holes and fill them back in again would also create jobs, yet you never hear supporters of corporate welfare advocating this.  It would probably create more jobs than corporate welfare, because it is more labor-intensive and cuts out the middle-man.  However, paying people to dig holes and fill them back in wouldn't provide much benefit to the power elite.  The function of corporate welfare is to act as a net wealth transfer from ordinary Americans to rich Americans, a bipartisan policy that significantly predates Bush's presidency.

Bush defends his economic policies by claiming that the economy isn't doing that bad, not anymore anyway.  As part of his defense Bush points out that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is now rising and recently it has been rising quite rapidly.  Which is true - but it doesn't matter because GDP is not a good way to measure the health of an economy.  GDP is the total market value of all the goods and services produced within the borders of a country during some period of time.  If something doesn't have a market value then it is not measured in the GDP.  If you grow carrots and sell them that raises the GDP, but if you grow carrots and eat them that does not raise the GDP.  In both cases the amount of stuff produced has increased but it's only counted as part of the GDP if it is sold before being consumed.  If a forest is destroyed in order to build a parking lot that raises the GDP but if the forest is left alone the GDP does not go up.  There is no particular reason to automatically favor the parking lot over the forest, both have potential uses.  Nor is there any reason why selling a carrot should be better than eating a carrot.  However, if a forest is destroyed and a parking lot built a corporation makes profit from doing that, it does not if the forest is left alone.  If you grow carrots and eat them no one makes money from that but when they are sold usually a corporation makes money from it (and the government often gets taxes from it).  GDP isn't geared towards measuring total production but towards how much money the capitalist are making, regardless of environmental or other costs.  Even if GDP did measure total production it wouldn't be a good measure of the economy because that wouldn't indicate the distribution of what is produced.  Rising production doesn't necessarily benefit the average person, it could all go to the wealthy.  And that's basically what's happening; inequality has continued to rise under the Bush administration just as it has done under previous administrations.  In addition, even rising production which is equally distributed isn't necessarily a good thing.  Infinite production may be good for business, but it cannot be done on a finite planet without large-scale ecological destruction and the total depletion of resources.  Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.

In his 2004 State of the Union address Bush claimed that 1,000 new jobs had been created but what he didn't mention is that 309,000 people stopped looking for work because they couldn't find any.  That is the real reason the unemployment rate appeared to have dropped; it didn't really drop but seemed  to drop because the inability to find a job has caused some to stop looking.  Bush is playing statistical games to try and make unemployment look better than it is.  Growth in jobs has consistently lagged behind growth in GDP as well as the predictions made by the Bush administration and many other economists.  Given his support for "outsourcing," shipping American jobs overseas, it is hard to take him seriously when he says he's trying to decrease unemployment.  Given enough time unemployment will probably fall again regardless of what the President does, it is in the nature of the capitalist business cycle.

The depression of the last several years, including the growth in unemployment, is the outcome of the business cycle inherent in market capitalism.  This is a depression; "recession" is what depressions were renamed after World War Two to disassociate them from the Great Depression.  In boom times production goes up and businesses hire more workers in order to produce more and make more money.  Eventually this leads to a decreasing of unemployment.  Lower unemployment puts the working class in a better bargaining position because it makes it easier for workers to leave one job and find a better one.  This eventually leads to better wages, benefits, working conditions and the like for the workers.  As workers begin to get a larger share of the pie the profits of the capitalist class begins to go down.  Capitalists react to this in a number of ways.  One is by using fraud to compensate, as was done by Enron, Worldcom, and other corporate criminals.  This corporate crime wave can't just be a few "bad apples," as the capitalist media portrays it, because there were more then a few capitalists who did this.  It was the outcome of systemic causes, namely the capitalist business cycle.  Similar corporate scandals have happened many times before, such as the Savings & Loans scandal of the late '80s.  Fraud, however, just covers up the underlying decrease in profits and so can only last for a while.

Eventually the squeeze on profits drives the capitalists to launch an offensive against the workers.  Capitalists attempt to squeeze more out of their workers by replacing humans with automation, shutting down the less profitable enterprises, laying off workers and attempting to make the remaining workers do more work, freezing or cutting wages & benefits, increasing working hours, increasing productivity faster than pay and a variety of other actions designed to get more profit per worker.  Unemployment is driven up, putting workers in a weaker position.  This ultimately puts a stop to the workers' improving position and allows profits (and production) to eventually begin to rise again, eventually leading to another boom, followed by another slump, repeating again and again.  Most modern capitalist societies employ regulation and control over the money supply to insure that the booms and bust go to extremes, but the existence of this business cycle is rooted in the nature of market capitalism.  Once again, none of this is some kind of giant conspiracy but the outcome of the fact that many people find themselves in similar situations and thus tend to react in similar ways.

VII. The New World Order

Although what the United States is doing to Iraq is nothing new, what is new is the degree of opposition it has faced from elites within the American empire. In the past most US client states went along with US aggression. Although the domestic population and countries outside the empire often vigorously opposed US imperialism the rulers of America's client states were generally obedient. US interventions in Iran, Congo, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Laos, Chile and many other places did not see the kind of internal opposition from American client states that the invasion of Iraq did. In the Korean war the UN even supported the US side. This change is also the result of a historic trend and the evolution of the structure of the empire. It has been brought about by two things: the fall of the Soviet empire, which removed the American empire's only rival and the main check on it's expansionist ambitions, and the emergence of a global ruling class, which is starting to come into conflict with the empire that created it.  President Bush the first used the phrase "the New World Order" to describe the world system which emerged after the fall of the Soviet empire.  It was originally believed that this would mark greater international cooperation but, except in the beginning, this period has seen increasing tensions between the United States and the rest of the world.

This process can be seen by looking at recent American interventions. Prior to the Gulf War Iraq, ruled by Saddam Hussein, was an American client state. The United States supported Iraq's aggression against Iran and continued to support Saddam after the end of the war. In 1990 neighboring Kuwait started using slant drilling (directional drilling) to drill diagonally into Iraq's oil fields, taking their oil for themselves. This provoked a major row between the two countries, eventually leading to war. On July 25th 1990, as Iraq's troops were massing on the Kuwaiti border, Saddam Hussein met with US Ambassador April Glaspie. He asked her about the conflict with Kuwait and she told him, "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." This and other signals from the White House were interpreted by Saddam as a green light to take over Kuwait. Eight days after meeting with Ambassador Glaspie Iraqi troops invaded and quickly conquered Kuwait.

After the invasion Saddam was transformed from friend into the devil incarnate, the "next Hitler." A military buildup and propaganda campaign against Iraq was initiated. Many lies were propagated as part of this propaganda campaign, just as there were many lies in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and and in almost every other war. The US claimed that Saddam was massing troops on the Saudi Arabian border, preparing to take that country over as the next step on his road to world domination.  Jean Heller of the St. Petersburg Times (of Florida) obtained commercial satellite photos of the border which clearly showed that Iraq was not massing troops on the Saudi Arabian border, the US was making it up.  A year later the government admitted this claim was false, but by then the war was over and few were paying attention.

The PR company Hill & Knowlton was hired by the Kuwaiti royal family to generate war propaganda and persuade Americans to support the war.  They fabricated Iraqi atrocity stories which were uncritically circulated by the media and cited by many politicians, including President Bush the first, as justification for the war.  The most famous of these fabrications was the incubators story.  A woman called Nayirah tearfully testified that, "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital. While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."  It was claimed 312 babies were treated in this manner.  This story was uncritically circulated throughout the media and repeated by many politicians, including the President.  Nayirah was actually a member of the Kuwaiti royal family and the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the US, Prince Saud Nasir al-Sabah.  The employees at the al-Addan hospital said she had never worked there.  Later investigations by Amnesty International, the Kuwaiti government itself and others conclusively established that the incubators story, and a raft of other stories, were complete fabrications.

Saddam was demonized as an evil, vicious tyrant who murdered and oppressed his people. Which is true, but he was also a viscous tyrant who murdered and oppressed his people when the US supported him.  The US was also supporting many other tyrannies at the time, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and continues to do so today.  Kuwait itself has always been a brutal monarchy with few human rights, ruled by an oppressive oligarchy that engages in censorship and tortures dissidents.  The US wasn't fighting to "liberate" Kuwait, at most it was fighting to replace Iraqi tyrants with Kuwaiti tyrants.  If the US was fighting for democracy then it wouldn't have supported all these other dictatorships and it would have insisted on Kuwait becoming a democracy instead of putting the King back on his throne.

Nor was the war simply a reaction against Iraqi imperialism.  The US backed Iraq's invasion of Iran.  At the time East Timor was still part of Indonesia, which invaded and conquered it in the '70s.  Indonesia was strongly supported by the US before, during and after the invasion.  The US sold them weapons which they used to conquer the country and exterminate a fourth of the population.  Morocco has been occupying Western Sahara for years yet the US hasn't threatened to invade them.  The United States itself has repeatedly launched invasions similar to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.  In 1989 President Bush the first invaded Panama, rapidly crushed it's military and installed a satellite state.  The official justification for this was that Panama was ruled by an evil dictator, Manuel Noriega, who was a tyrant involved in drug running.  Noriega had been on the CIA payroll since 1966 and the US continued to support him after he became dictator.  He had been engaged in various nefarious activities, including drug trafficking and other things, for years prior to the invasion, yet the US continued to support him throughout all this.  The actual reason for the invasion was that Noriega was becoming too independent (failing to provide enough support to the Contras and defying the US in other ways) and his corruption was growing so great that it began to interfere with US investment.  Violence, fraud and drug trafficking continued under the new government but it is more obedient to Washington.  Thus the Gulf War could not be motivated by a US stand against Iraqi aggression because the US hasn't raised objections to invasions by other countries, has actively supported other invasions and engaged in such invasions itself.

The Gulf War was really about power.  Iraq was becoming a regional power and in a few years might have been capable of challenging US domination of the Middle East.  Dominating the middle east is important because it has the largest reserves of the world's main energy source, oil.  Control of the world's main energy source puts you in a position of great power.  The crushing defeat delivered to Iraq by the US sent a message to any other leader that would dare step out of line.  American bases and military presence in the region were expanded, increasing US control over the region while funding the military industrial complex, and Kuwait was made more dependant on the US.

In many countries there was substantial opposition to participation in the Gulf War, yet the governments of most of these countries sided with the US anyway.  For example, a large majority of people in Turkey were against the war, but Turkey fought anyway.  Most governments around the world, even some outside the American empire (including Syria), supported the US in the war.  International support by governments for the US position was extremely large.  Between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqis were killed in the war.  For comparison, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait killed up to 200 people and the US's 1989 invasion of Panama killed 7,500 people.  There were all sorts of lies involved in the Gulf War, just as in the 2003 Iraq-US war, but unlike in the Iraq-US war the war mostly went well for the US (it did not face a prolonged guerilla war afterwards) and these lies were largely ignored outside of radical circles.

Unlike the Gulf War US military action against Yugoslavia in 1999 did meet with substantial international resistance from foreign governments.  In the Yugoslav province of Kosovo the CIA supported a guerilla movement aiming to establish independence for Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).  The Yugoslav government called the KLA terrorists, the US called them freedom fighters.  Muslim fundamentalists fought with the KLA against the Yugoslav government.  These
rebels have also been linked to Bin Laden.  The United States "mediated" talks between the (US-backed) KLA and Yugoslavia.  The US proposed a peace deal, the Rambouillet accords, whereby Kosovo would be given autonomy, but not independence.  In addition, appendix B of the Rambouillet accords provided for the US-led military alliance NATO to station "peacekeeper" troops not only in Kosovo, but in all of Yugoslavia.  It specified that "NATO shall be immune from all legal process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal," "NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties, jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]," and that:

"NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY ... NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations. ... The authorities in the FRY shall facilitate, on a priority basis and with all appropriate means, all movement of personnel, vehicles, vessels, aircraft, equipment, or supplies, through or in the airspace, ports, airports, or roads used. ... NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails, and ports without payment of fees, duties, dues, tolls, or charges occasioned by mere use. ... The Parties shall, upon simple request, grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO. ... The Parties shall provide, free of cost, such public facilities as NATO shall require to prepare for and execute the Operation. ... Commercial undertakings operating in the FRY only in the service of NATO shall be exempt from local laws and regulations with respect to the terms and conditions of their employment and licensing and registration of employees, businesses, and corporations."

In short, this appendix would have made Yugoslavia into a NATO protectorate, controlled by the United States and West Europe.  Disguised as a "peace proposal," the Rambouillet accords were in fact an ultimatum that Yugoslavia surrender and effectively become NATO property.  Not surprisingly, Yugoslavia rejected it.  The US then led a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.  The Rambouillet accords were intended to be rejected, to give NATO a justification to attack Yugoslavia.

The pretext to bomb Yugoslavia was that it was committing genocide in Kosovo.  The Yugoslav army did commit many atrocities after the bombing began, but there was no genocide in Kosovo prior to the start of the bombing.  NATO's own figures state that about 2000 people were killed on both sides in the year prior to the bombing, a number that hardly qualifies as genocide.  NATO's bombing killed more people than that.  British defense minister George Robertson (who later became NATO secretary-general) testified on March 24, 1999 (the day the bombing started) to the House of Commons that until mid-January, "the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Serbian authorities."  On January 18 foreign secretary Robin Cook told the House that the KLA had "committeed more breaches of the ceasefire, and until this weekend was responsible for more deaths than the [Yugoslav] security forces."  The event "this weekend" in mid-January which Cook and Robertson are referring to was the Racak massacre on January 25th.  Some have argued that the massacre was a hoax staged to justify attacking Yugoslavia, but even if it wasn't Western sources admit the distribution of killings after the alleged massacre continued the same as before the massacre.  The bombings caused atrocities to greatly increase as the Yugoslav authorities attempted to suppress the CIA-backed insurgency.  About a week after the bombing started the UN started registering refugees fleeing from Kosovo.  A few days after the bombing began General Wesley Clark, commander of the NATO forces attacking Yugoslavia, said the stepped up atrocities in Kosovo "was entirely predictable at this stage."  In his memoirs Clark said that on March 6th he informed Secretary of State Madeline Albright that if NATO bombed Yugoslavia they would almost certainly attack the civilian population in response.

Even if one ignores all this, the official pretext is not credible because the actions of the US indicate that it doesn't really care about genocide unless it can be used to attack an enemy.  The US ignored the genocide in Rwanda that occurred several years earlier.  The Liquica massacre committed by US-backed Indonesian forces in East Timor, which was still part of Indonesia at the time, occurred shortly after the Racak massacre and the US was selling Indonesia the weapons it was using to commit massacres.

The US backed Turkey's genocide against the Kurds, most of which occurred while Clinton was President.  Turkey responded to an insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting for an independent Kurdish state with a campaign of ethnic cleansing.  Innocent Kurdish civilians were killed indiscriminately, over 3000 Kurdish villages were destroyed, tens of thousands of Kurds murdered and the Kurdish language outlawed.  Eighty percent of Turkey's arms came from the United States, which supported this ethnic cleansing at the same time it was denouncing alleged ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.  Turkish Kurdistan has many mineral resources, including chromium, uranium, gold and silver.  The Turkish government, of course, labeled the PKK "terrorist" and the genocide "counter-terrorism."  Though the PKK did commit a few atrocities, it didn't destroy any Turkish villages or engage in the genocide which the Turkish government did with US support.  Turkey is a member of NATO and was still engaged in ethnic cleansing when NATO bombed Yugoslavia, accusing Yugoslavia of doing the same thing one of it's own members was doing.

The US was also committing genocide in Iraq at the same time, via sanctions that denied Iraqis access to needed supplies.  According to the UN the sanctions on Iraq killed between 1.5 and 3 million people.  The sanctions, one of the tightest in the world, were originally placed on Iraq to force it to withdraw from Kuwait.  After it was forced out of Kuwait the US (and UK) insured that the sanctions continued.  During the Gulf War the US intentionally targeted Iraq's water system.  The sanctions insured that Iraq could not import supplies to repair it's water supplies, resulting in large-scale deaths.  UNICEF reported that on average 5,000 children died every month as a result of sanctions.  The effects of the sanctions were slightly less devastating in northern Iraq because it had better agriculture, was receiving humanitarian assistance for a longer period of time and evading sanctions were easier due to more porous borders.  As in every class society, resources in Iraq were disproportionately geared towards the elite (building palaces for Saddam, etc.) and away from the poor.  This was as true in the '80s as it was in the '90s but the sanctions shrank the total resources available, hurting the poor (not Saddam and his cronies) the most.  In the mid-90s an "oil for food" program was set up to allow Iraq to trade oil for a limited amount of supplies.  All money made from the sale of oil was kept by the UN in an escrow account with the Bank of Paris in New York City; about a third was used to pay reparations to Kuwait.  Anything imported had to go through a highly bureaucratic process, dominated by the US & UK, in which things like pencils and detergent could be delayed or blocked from being shipped to Iraq.  The "oil for food" program was largely a farce that enabled the US & UK to look more humanitarian.  In 1998 Dennis Halliday, the head of the "oil for food" program resigned in protest against the genocidal sanctions.  Two years later his successor, Hans Von Sponek, also resigned in protest against the sanctions.  On the TV show "60 minutes" on May 12, 1996 the reporter Lesly Stahl asked Madeleine Albright, who was then the Secretary of State, "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"  Albright's response was not to deny the deaths, but instead to say "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."

Therefore the pretext used by the US/NATO to attack Yugoslavia, that they were trying to stop genocide in Kosovo, is not believable because the US sabotaged peace negotiations (appendix B of the Rambouillet accords), prior to the NATO bombing there was no genocide, the bombing caused atrocities to increase and NATO knew it would have that effect, NATO ignored the genocide in Rwanda and the US actively supported genocides in East Timor, Turkish Kurdistan and Iraq.  NATO and the US don't have any objection to genocide, that was just a pretext used to justify aggression against Yugoslavia.

The war over Kosovo was the next-to-last act in the dismembering of Yugoslavia and the installation of several US/NATO client states in it's place.  Unlike most other Eastern Bloc states Yugoslavia experienced its own Leninist revolution after World War Two.  The local Communist party seized power on it's own; Leninism wasn't imposed solely by Soviet tanks as elsewhere in Eastern Europe.  Partly as a result, Yugoslavia eventually implemented market socialism instead of Stalinist centralized planning and became the freest of all the Eastern Bloc countries.  Yugoslavia implemented a limited form of self-management, whereby workers could basically elect their bosses.  Eventually centralized planning and these enterprises competed with each other in the marketplace, with investment controlled by the state (which was a one-party state).  In the late '80s Yugoslavia started taking money from the IMF and moving towards an ordinary corporate capitalist economy.  This hurt the economy, and those moves were stopped.  After the Soviet empire dissolved the US and several other NATO countries took advantage of internal problems within Yugoslavia to encourage it's breakup, destroying one of the last remnants of the Eastern Bloc.  As part of this the US supported Muslim Fundamentalist terrorists in Bosnia.  After a few months of bombing, Yugoslavia & the US made a peace agreement in which NATO "peacekeepers" would occupy Kosovo.  The bombing further devastated an already damaged country and about a year and a half later a rebellion in Yugoslavia brought pro-Western politicians to power.  Yugoslavia was abolished a few years later; the union is dead.  Breaking up Yugoslavia into small US client states funded the military industrial complex, was a means of corporate welfare, made an example for any other country thinking of defying Washington and expanded American power.  Much of the world was opposed to the US's attack on Yugoslavia, it had no where near the level of support the Gulf War did, but most American client states, especially NATO, went along with it.

Unlike in Yugoslavia and the Gulf War, in the 2003 invasion of Iraq most of America's client states opposed the war.  Bush's attempt to deny this is dishonest.  In his 2004 state of the union address he said, "Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands, Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq."  There are 192 countries on the planet, over 130 of them have American bases in their territory.  About 40 countries supported the invasion, the rest opposed it.  Thus over 2/3rds of America's client states were against the US's invasion of Iraq, a significant rebellion against their master.  America's client states are becoming restless, and no longer obey the United States as they used to.

Many Democrats cite this large-scale opposition to the war from other governments as a criticism of Bush and the war, that the war was a bad idea because of international opposition.  This position can be summed up with the slogan "no mass murder without UN approval."  The invasion of Iraq was wrong because it killed thousands of innocent people and because it was an imperialist war of aggression, not because most of the world's governments opposed it.  If the United States faced this kind of resistance every time it engaged in aggression the world would probably be a better place.  The Democrat's position implies that it is perfectly acceptable to murder innocent people so long as most of the world's governments support it.  They have no problem with American imperialism, they just think that it was a mistake for Bush to invade Iraq.  By their logic, conquest is okay so long as the costs aren't too high.  That's not much of an opposition, they agree with the basic goals of US imperialism but just have some tactical differences with Bush.  The same kind of criticism of Hitler was made by the German general staff after Stalingrad.  It's a phony opposition.

Hatred of the American government by ordinary people in other countries is the result of US imperialism.  You can't go around installing murderous dictatorships, dropping thousands of bombs, assassinating leaders and bullying the world around and expect the victims to like you.  This 'hatred of America' applies mainly to the US government and it's policies, ordinary Americans are hated only to the degree that they are perceived to support the government and it's foreign policy.  This doesn't necessarily extend to the position of their governments, however.  Satellite states usually tend to follow the orders of their masters, at least on important issues.

There are two reasons which have caused the greater tension between the United States and it's client states.  One is the emergence of a global ruling class, which is coming into conflict with the American empire that spawned it.  This new global ruling class is based on growing international institutions such as the WTO, UN, multinational corporations and the like.  These are all centralized, hierarchical institutions with a small group on top holding most power, an emerging global power elite.  Economic aspects of this can be seen in the spread of multi-national corporations, the proliferation of transnational mergers and acquisitions, the rise of a global financial system, the sharp increase in foreign direct investment, greater interlocking of positions within the global corporate structure and the "tripolarization" of the global economy (50 years ago the US had 50% of the world’s wealth, today that has declined and Europe & East Asia have become wealthier).  These transnational economic elites often wield considerable influence over weaker countries.  Political aspects of this global power elite can be seen in the spread of international bureaucracies & institutions such as the World Trade Organization, World Economic Forum, Trilateral Commission, and United Nations.

These international political and economic institutions, and the transnational elite that goes along with them, were originally created by the American empire as a means of controlling and exploiting the area under it's rule.  Both the transnational elite and American empire share common interests visa vi the rest of the world, which they rule.  However, they do not always see eye-to-eye.  Fifty years ago the kind of opposition we saw to American imperialism over the Iraq war from US client states and international institutions did not exist (it did from ordinary people, but not these international institutions).  The US installed countless dictatorships in Latin America & elsewhere, invaded Vietnam and many other countries without this type of opposition.  The UN and many other international institutions were very obedient to the US.  As the transnational elite gains more power it increasingly comes into conflict with the American empire, starts to compete with it for power and influence.  Much of contemporary international politics is the result of the conflict between the American empire and the emerging global ruling class.

This actually predates the Gulf War and can be seen in the increasing disobedience of the UN, US unilateralism in support of Israel, increasing opposition to US interventions in many parts of the world, the "tripolarization" of the economy and other things, going back to at least the 1970s.  Relations between the American empire & transnational elite swing back and forth, sometimes they walk hand in hand (as in the Gulf War) other times they come into major conflict (as in the Iraq war), but the overall trend is towards greater conflict between the two.  In the short term things are probably going to swing back towards greater cooperation between the American empire and the transnational elite, however this can only be temporary because the conflict is inherent in the structure of international relations.  Overall tensions will tend to increase over the coming decades, until the American empire declines and falls.  This opens up the potential for a global revolution with the transnational ruling class overthrowing the American power and seizing power for itself, probably establishing what amounts to a world government (although it likely wouldn't be called that at first).  Such a global revolution would potentially also provide great opportunities for anti-authoritarian revolutionaries, who could take advantage of it to push the revolution even further and overthrow the transnational elite.  For a more in-depth treatment of the rise of a global ruling class, and it's relationship with the American empire, see my essay The American Empire and the Emergence of a Global Ruling Class.

Another factor in the recent evolution of international relations is the fall of the Soviet empire, which has removed one of the main deterrents to US expansionism.  As a result the US has becoming increasingly aggressive ever since it fell.  Bill Clinton bombed more countries than any previous 'peacetime' President.  Had the US attacked Yugoslavia before the fall of the Soviet empire it would probably have resulted in nuclear war with Russia, which is why it didn't happen until after the USSR broke up.  One can see this in the White House's ultra-hawkish National Security Strategy of the United States, released in September 2002.  This document is based on the report Rebuilding America's Defenses, issued by the Project for a New American Century, a conservative think tank whose members have included Dick Cheney and many other officials in the Bush administration.  It in turn is based on an earlier report from the defense department in 1992 which had to be withdrawn because the majority of the power elite were not yet ready to implement it's ideas at that early stage.  Today they are.  Rebuilding America's Defenses calls for the creation of a "Pax Americana" and advocates many things that the Bush administration has now implemented.  Among it's claims are that, "At Present the United States faces no global rival.  America's grand strategy should be to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible."  It is basically a plan for world domination.  To this end it cites Iraq, Iran and North Korea - what Bush would later call the "axis of evil" as good short term targets.  With regard to Iraq it says, "Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

As part of this aggressive policy, the White House as decreed a policy of what it calls "pre-emptive war," but what should more accurately be called "preventative war."  "Pre-emptive war" is when an enemy is about to attack you, the bombers are on the way, and you launch an attack.  The doctrine Bush has laid out, preventative war, means the United States has the right to attack any country that might someday, years down the road, be a threat to the US even if they aren't about to attack.  In short, any country that might one day pose a threat to American power will be attacked and destroyed before it is capable of doing so.  In other words, the US will use force to insure it continues to dominate the world indefinitely.  In an interview on Meet the Press, part of Bush's defense of the war in Iraq was, "when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It's too late if they become imminent. It's too late in this new kind of war, and so that's why I made the decision I made" and that Saddam Hussein, "had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon."  This can be used to justify attacking almost any country.  Virtually any nation could become an "imminent threat" at some point in the future, and almost all countries theoretically have the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.  And that's the point - the US intends to rule the world by force.  The doctrine of preventative war isn't entirely new.  It was Japan's justification for Pearl Harbor.  It was also used by the Kennedy administration to justify the Bay of Pigs.  At the time it could not be applied on the scale that Bush is doing because preventative war on that scale would have resulted in nuclear war with Russia.

This increased aggressiveness has alienated much of the world and been part of the reason there has been greater opposition to US imperialism recently.  It has helped drive the transnational ruling class into greater conflict with the American empire.  The failure of most American client states to obey the wishes of the United States has caused the US to adopt an increasingly unilateral stance.  If the rest of the empire won't go along with what the American government wants, as they did 50 years ago, then the United States will go it alone.  The Clinton administration summed it up as, "multilateral when we can, unilateral when we must."  The Bush administration has basically followed a similar slogan, except due to changing circumstances (such as the rise of a global ruling class) the rest of the empire is less willing to take orders from Washington and "unilateral when we must" is now more common.  If more countries were willing to sign up to support Bush on Iraq or other issues he wouldn't have turned them down, but they weren't so the US was forced to be unilateral if it wanted to achieve it's goals.  In the short term the resistance in Iraq will probably force the US to take a less unilateral stance, regardless of who is President.  The resistance has made it less likely that the US will invade other countries (Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc.), thus decreasing tensions with the rest of the empire, and is forcing the US to seek the aid of other countries & international institutions in putting down the resistance.  The more successful the resistance is the more it will force the US away from the extreme unilateralism of the last few years.

VIII. Hierarchy

Imperialism is the result of the state and class system. Power corrupts and leads to a thirst for greater power. Because these are hierarchical institutions those who decide whether or not to attack another country, whether there shall be an imperialist war, are not usually those who will fight and die in the resulting war. Those on the top can often gain greater power, wealth and other benefits but they are not the ones who have to pay the costs of imperialist wars. Those with decision making power gain a disproportionate share of the benefits, but shove the negative consequences onto others. This leads to war and imperialism, with the ruling classes of the world sending the working classes of the world off to kill each other for the benefit of their masters. If those who chose to start wars were the ones who had to fight and die in them there would be few wars, and no empires.

In addition, wars can sometimes benefit the elites by making the domestic population more obedient.  War distracts them from the conflict between classes within society and directs it towards conflict with foreign enemies.  War propaganda tends to equate the interests of the power elite with the interests of the entire population, imposing a false unity between exploiter and exploited.  It thereby often causes the population to "rally 'round the flag," increasing the legitimacy of the state and denouncing dissidents as "unpatriotic."  This is especially effective at the start of the war and if the war goes well.  When wars go badly this can sometimes backfire (eg. Russia 1917, Vietnam).  War is the health of the state.

This does not mean that every state will be engaged in imperialism at every moment in time.  A weak state in the process of being taken over by a more powerful state will obviously have a difficult time engaging in imperialism.  However, any system of multiple states will inevitably develop wars, imperialism and eventually empires.  Imperialism is rooted in the domestic social structure of the imperialist society.

The domestic class war is the flip side of imperialism.  Both have the same root cause: the state and class system.  Both divide society into a small minority, who have most of the wealth and power, and the majority who have less of it.  Wealth, power and resources are distributed extremely unequally, with those of the top having far more than those on the bottom.  In the United States the richest 1% of the population has more wealth than the poorest 95% of the population combined.  The division of society into classes is a recipe for conflict between them.  Those on the top act to defend and expand their power and privileges by implementing policies that favor them, such as imperialism, tax cuts for the rich, government subsidies for big business, etc.  Because they hold most of the power policies favoring them are the policies implemented.  Those below the elite can sometimes force it to make concessions to those below them (through unrest, building movements aiming at the overthrow of the power elite and other things) but ultimately control remains with the power elite, barring a social revolution.

Hierarchy, the division of society into order-givers and order-takers, is the root cause of most major social problems today. Problems related to the oppression of women (discrimination, sexual harassment, domestic abuse, rape, etc.) are the outcome of hierarchy, of men having power over women. Racial problems are also the result of hierarchy, of dividing humanity into races with whites having privileges over people of color. Imperialism is the outcome of the state (political hierarchy) and class (economic hierarchy) and is itself a form of hierarchy. Environmental problems are the outcome of hierarchy, especially capitalism. Those on the top can gain greater profits (or other benefits) by engaging in actions which damage the environment but shove the negative results of those actions onto those lower in the hierarchy. This is why environmental problems tend to disproportionately affect minorities and the poor. Rich people generally do not live in the areas they pollute. This is worse under capitalism because capitalism is based on a never ending accumulation of profit, growth for the sake of growth, and in a finite world this inevitably results in ecological destruction.

This can be seen at work in the case of same-sex marriage.  This is a civil rights issue, about denying gays & lesbians equal rights including the right to get married.  Rights regarding health care decisions, pensions, adoption rights, health insurance and inheritance are all linked to marriage.  For example, if a man's gay partner of many years is in the hospital he may be denied visitation rights to his spouse because they are not legally married and (until recently) are not legally allowed to be married.  It is these rights which are what is really at stake in the fight over same-sex marriage.  The proposed constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage says, "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."  Those "legal incidents thereof" happen to be those rights, such as being able to visit your spouse in a hospital, which are denied to homosexual couples.

It is very difficult to defend the position that homosexual spouses should not be allowed to visit each other if one is in the hospital (which is what opposition to same-sex marriage amounts to), so instead opponents of same-sex marriage use word games and try to turn it into a semantic debate.  They claim that the "definition" of marriage is that it can only be between a man and a woman.  However, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines marriage as "(1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2) : the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage."  Thus, this is not the definition - even the dictionary says so.  Furthermore, their "definition" of marriage is completely arbitrary.  One could just as easily say that the "definition" of marriage is that it can only be between people of the same race.  Both are equally arbitrary.  Conceptions of marriage have varied greatly in many different societies throughout history, this crap about "definitions" is just used because there is no rational defense for their position.  Some want to allow "civil unions" which would grant the same legal rights as marriage, but this would implement a form of segregation and thus de-facto continue treating homosexuals as second-class citiz