These are critical times in our lives, and in world history. The days are ticking off to earth shattering events that can change our world for decades to come. The US is bringing its last pieces into place for war against Iraq. The US just exploded a devastating new weapon in Florida, the MOAD, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld openly bragged that was partly done as "psychological warfare." Bush spokesman Ari Fleicher warned the US media not to publish reports accusing the US of causing civilian casualties. Over 200,000 US troops are now stationed in the Persian Gulf. They have reserved the right to preemptively use nuclear weapons. The US has already announced that more bombs will be dropped on Iraq in the first 2 days of war than in the whole 40 days of the last Gulf war—sending over 700 cruise missiles in 48 hours, to create an effect similar to Hiroshima. They are scrambling to build a coalition based on the bullied and the bought. These are the grim political preparations for a major war of injustice.

But as the US brings it’s last pieces into place for war, it faces a much more unfavorable situation than Bush and his minions ever expected. Over 12 million people took to the streets in over 600 cities around the world on Feb. 15. The US has been publicly humiliated by the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Even with all this, is impossible to tell in advance just how much this will, in the end, force the hand of the Bush clique to stop the madness.

I will come back to this vital question of resistance, but first I want to pose the question: Why? Why is the US so determined to go into Iraq? What is this really all about? My comments are based on an important article which was published in the Revolutionary Worker newspaper, called "Dissecting the Bush Doctrine, US Imperialism’s Crusade for One World Empire."

After 9.11, the US declared a "war on the world." Since then, the US conducted a brutal war against Afghanistan; set up 13 new US military bases in the oil-rich and gas-rich countries surrounding Afghanistan; US troops have been sent to the Philippines, Yemen and Somalia; they have declared a war without boundaries and without end; declared their right to use first strike nuclear weapons. And on the home front, they have rounded up, detained, and deported immigrants, and enacted frightening new police state measures including the vast expansion of police surveillance powers and the creation of military tribunals.

The government claims this is all about preventing new outbreaks of terrorism—that it’s about our security, about democracy, about the preservation of civilization (as they define it!). We say it’s all about the needs of empire.

This is about US world domination on a whole new level. According to Bushspeak, a war on Iraq is simply "Phase 2" in their war on the world. And there actually is a whole US strategy for world domination, most of it created way before 9.11. In fact, most of it was developed in 1992 in a briefing paper title the Defense Planning Guidance Draft.

Since the end of the Cold War, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has been the ONLY superpower, unchallenged in the world.

1. This strategy would make US superiority over potential rivals permanent. It is about guaranteeing that US military and economic dominance in the world remains unchallenged. In other words, they want to cash in on the fact that the US is now the only superpower in the world, and make it’s singular dominance permanent. They want to prevent any other power, especially its allies in Western Europe, Russian, Japan, or any possible coalition, from challenging US strategic interests anywhere in the world.

And the US is trying to accomplish this by seeking to widen it’s military-technology lead, committing itself to a permanent arms race. The US is also strong-arming and cajoling other powers, which we can see in how the US has been trying to pressure France and Germany into supporting the assault on Iraq—saying that it they don’t join in on the war, they will be cut out of the spoils of war, especially and oil deals. And the US is also to widen it’s interests in East Asia, the most rapidly developing source of superexploitable labor in the world, and the home of large oil reserves.

2. This strategy declares the right of the US to use preemptive force to accomplish this objective of world dominance. The US declares that preemption can, and will, be used on a global scale, and it will be a norm of US conduct. Preemption also requires the ability to strike quickly and anywhere. So it also means the rapid and continual development of expanded war fighting capabilities—from advances in satellite and computer-guided bombing and missile systems, expanded air and sea lift capabilities to rapidly move troops and armor, electronic communications and reconnaissance, and further development and deployment of special operations forces. The Bush team is spending a quarter trillion dollars over the next 5 years for this.

3. This strategy involves a new, open US colonialism, a global onslaught against the Third World and new forms of control. This is what they mean by "regime change in the Third World." Regime change is not about democracy; it is about taking out regimes that defy US authority, especially in strategic regions of the world. It’s also about trying to get a firmer grip on the growing instability in the Third World due to the rotten effects of globalization. For example, in Latin America, severe austerity and adjustment programs ordered by the IMF have created rampant corruption, the flight of capital out of these countries, and the economic ruin of the middle classes.

4. This strategy involves the US breaking out of international laws and agreements, even those it helped set up! For example, the US has already removed itself from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. It has opposed the International Criminal Court and forced the UN to give it temporary immunity from the UN’s jurisdiction in punishing war crimes. It has refused to honor the Geneva Convention on the treatment of POW’s—since that would interfere with its denial of rights and mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. It has rejected verification measure for the Biological Weapons Convention, since the US does not want inspectors learning too much about its military-biological labs and programs—which of course is the height of hypocrisy since this is the demand the US is making on Iraq! The US is saying that the rest of the world has limited sovereignty, but the US has unlimited global sovereignty to act against other states.

These 4 points of the "grand strategy" are in play in Iraq.

The US aim in Iraq is to turn Iraq into a platform from which to reshape political and economic relations in the Middle East. To underscore the scope of it’s ambition, the US has floated out that it is prepared to occupy Iraq, for years if necessary, and to install a US military administration under General Tommy Franks!

As for oil, it is clearly a goal. Iraq’s oil reserves are the second largest in the world. A direct US beachhead in the heart of the Middle Eastern oilfields would have enormous regional and international implications. It would radically affect the internal politics of OPEC. It would give the US a freer hand to alter arrangements with other oil-producing states. Control over Iraqi oilfields would strengthen US leverage over Western Europe and Japan, which rely heavily on Middle Eastern Oil. A direct US presence would also hamper Russia from pursuing its own imperial agenda in the region.

A US occupation of Iraq or the installation of a pliant pro-US regime would allow the US to shift its major military forces away from an increasingly unreliable Saudi Arabia. It would put pressure on neighboring Iran. A pro-US Iraq would serve as a launching pad for political and economic "reordering" in the region.

Politically, the US wants to develop more dependable ruling elites with broader bases of support in the middle classes. This especially so in countries like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt—where the influence of anti-American, Islamic-fundamentalist forces is quite strong. Economically, the US wants to batter down barriers to penetration and control by corporate capital. It wants to modernize the social and economic conditions for exploitation.

The overthrow of Saddam would also aid Israel, America’s most trusted client in the Middle East. It would provide Israel with a more favorable regional framework within which to suppress Palestinian resistance and fortify occupation and control.

Finally, a successful war against Iraq would be a demonstration of brute power. It would show allies and foes alike what happens when a regime defies the new Roman Empire. It would serve as a precedent for preemptive military strikes in other parts of the world. In these ways, the ouster of Saddam Hussein bolsters the US’s regional and world agenda. It is a critical step in the US’s wild ambitions for it’s "grand strategy."

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OK, the US government wants to accomplish all this, in Iraq and beyond. They have unchallenged military might, incredible wealth and economic control over many parts of the world. And here at home, the dominance of the corporate mass media can be suffocating. So why is the US having so many problems? Why have millions of people, who live in this country and around the world, not going along with this? Because this war is fundamentally not in their interests. The US finds itself isolated from its own allies because this war would strengthen US domination even over other major powers. Months of international protest have helped isolate the US and its "coalition of the bought and bullied." The protests have exposed the total illegitimacy of the US war plans and exposed the endless lies used to justify the attack.

People have been determined, knowing that continuing resistance makes it harder for the US to launch the war. And people know that if the US ruthlessly presses ahead with their war plans, resistance can be intensified and spread even more—to make it harder for the US to carry out whatever next "phase" of bullying and intervention they are already planningWe will make it clear to the people of the world that this war is unjust, immoral and illegitimate, no matter what the US or UN Security Council decides. War could be days away… Plans are already being developed in Cleveland, and around the country, in case they do press ahead with their war. Join with thousands of others to stand up when the bombs fall. If the bombs fall, churches all over the area will ring their bells, people will start gathering at street corners all over town. And there will be a mass outpouring of opposition on Public Square, with different events and actions starting at 3pm the day after the US invades Iraq. What are you going to do?