Iraq war. US role.

The Obama government boasts that the war in Iraq is now over and it is pulling out. This war for oil and power in the region was launched by conning the US people with lies. It has cost according to the Wall Street Journal, 4,469 US troops dead, 32,213 wounded and close to 1 trillion in dollars. The incredible bias of the US capitalist media is shown in that it gives no estimate of the number of Iraqi people killed. It never mentions this. Most estimates are around 1 million Iraqi people dead. What a catastrophe for the Iraqi people. And back in the US unemployment is double the rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Bush, Cheyney and the US elite are war criminals on the scale of Hitler and Stalin.

Obama claims the US government is pulling out. But it will have 8,000 at its embassy in Baghdad alone, it will be its most staffed embassy in the world. Many of these will be spies and CIA. And it will have thousands more left behind as so called trainers and thousands more so called contractors, that is mercenaries. The anger against the US invasion is so great that the US could not get the Iraqi government to agree to immunity from prosecution for any troops it would leave behind. The US problems in Iraq are far from over and it also leaves behind a situation where Iran's influence in Iraq and the whole region is strengthened. The last thing it wanted.

A US pull out is a strange thing. Over seven decades after the end of the war between the US imperialism and Japanese imperialism there are close to 50,000 US troops still in Japan and there are the troops in Germany and scores of other countries. Once the US gets its boots on the ground they are hard to get out. US imperialism is not a big fan of pulling out.

Trotsky talked about capitalism tobogganing towards the edge of the precipice with its eyes shut. This is a good way of describing the situation with US Imperialism at the moment. It cannot see the catastrophe it faces. It is in debt as never before. It cannot afford the mad arms expenditure that its imperial ambition and objectives demand. It cannot afford to keep its working class at home on the living standards of the past decades and at the same time dominate the world. This is no longer possible. So what is it doing?

It is going into debt as never before and at the same time it is cutting the US workers living standards as never before. This cannot go on. The first and most dramatic indications of this can be seen in the OWS movement. This movement with all its different issues is saying that things cannot go on as they are. Something has to change. Like the black revolt in the 1960's the OWS movement is saying: "We are not going to take it anymore." But the US ruling class, the US capitalist class, its Wall Street arrogant criminals, its military industrial criminals, its bribed and corrupted political criminals, plunges on regardless. It believes that it can overcome all obstacles. It has a very nasty shock coming.

It will increasingly lose its wars. It will increasingly see its military become discontented and rebel, it will increasingly see its youth and working class rise up and fight. We already see this beginning with the OWS movement. At home and abroad it will see its offensive confronted and thrown back. When this happens the big issues will be put into the mass consciousness once again, that is the big issues of capitalism, democratic socialism. We can all look forward to this great day.

Remember make the release of Bradley Manning part of the OWS movement.

Sean.