Ten years ago, an illegal war in Iraq started, that has left the country completely devastated, and its national identity more or less lost. The war was waged on a false pretext, lies, impunity, propaganda and absolute disrespect for human life. The aim of war was a moving target starting from destroying weapons of mass destruction to ultimately ‘liberating’ Iraqi people from a tyrant dictator who himself was once propped by CIA. In the pursuit of this final lofty goal, more than a million Iraqi civilians lost their lives, infrastructure of the country destroyed, health care reduced to nothing, status of women pushed to medieval ages, a mass of people forced now to grow in ruins and a country now torn with civil war like condition. The country has been pushed back by decades.

The architects of this war still proudly confess that even with the hindsight, they would have no qualms in doing this all over again. That is beyond appalling, linguists might find it difficult to coin one word for such extreme human apathy, inhumanity, brutality, smugness, arrogance, racism, utter disregard for human life and a lack of sense of fraternity with fellow human beings. Politically it is imperialism, just one word. It is not a ‘psychosis’ or a delusional behavior or a mental disorder as Arundhati Roy pointed out in one of her recent interviews, but is a well thought of policy position of imperialist empire. To keep their juggernaut rolling, the agents of imperialism will keep inventing enemies and waging wars for ‘democracy and liberation,’ with ironically clear ulterior motives. They will not stop until they have devoured every possible resource whether human or material from this earth and their appetite causes them to self-destruct. Till then, the corporate and war-profiteers will continue molding social, political and environmental landscape to their own advantage, and in the process destroying everything that is decent, civilized and beautiful.

The concept of ‘free market,’ first used by British, was to force colonies to open their markets and dump expensive British goods on the colonies while imposing prohibiting tariffs on imports from the colonies. India was the first and the one of the worst sufferers in the long list of countries to come which bore the brunt of British colonialism. Once an industrial economy and a thriving rich and cultural India was reduced to abject poverty and was turned into an agrarian economy. British soldiers and their allies needed food grains in their imperial wars, when the Indian populace suffered famine after famine claiming millions of innocent lives. The US stepped into the shoes of British colonization, and quickly transformed into imperial power rather than a colonizer. The policy makers realized that there was no need to colonize a country as long as the country’s resources and markets had unbridled access to US corporations and interest. ‘Regime change’ is now the cornerstone of US foreign policy which is adopted where the country is weak and rich in resources. It is capitalism at its peak.

The pursuit of capitalism is now no longer under shrouds carried out by secret agencies waging covert wars and destabilizing democracies detrimental to their interests. Now it is waging war with absolute impunity without even some semblance of pretext. The self-arrogated principle of pre-emptive strike with world as battlefield is the most dangerous principle US imperialism has brought down upon the world. Now, that there is nothing left to destroy in Iraq and Afghanistan, the drums of war now sing the tune of Iran and North Korea. A state of perpetual war is a necessity for the juggernaut of US imperialism to keep rolling. After exterminating the local Red Indian population in Americas, new enemies needed to be invented. And the list of enemies has grown long. In modern times, the United States military has been intervening in other countries for over a century. Many of the uses of US combat forces are well documented like in ‘A History of US Military Interventions since 1890.’ A brief perusal of US interventions in this work and others as mentioned below might help to get perspective on how the US imperial system made the whole world its playground and has been in a permanent state of war.

It seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898. In 1917-18 became embroiled in World War I in Europe to share the booty in dividing the world for exploitation which the then Europe’s colonial powers were fighting for. In the first half of the 20th century it repeatedly sent marines to client states such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. All these interventions directly served US corporate interests, and resulted in massive losses of civilians, rebels, and soldiers lives.

The search for new enemies never ceased. To get into the Second World War (1941-45), an excuse was needed. Japan was constantly provoked and intelligence on Pearl Harbor was ignored. Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor provided the way for the US to enter into the Second World War. Allied bombers used Napalm bombs on civilian targets along with fascist military targets which increased Axis civilian support of their regimes to defend their homelands. When Russia almost defeated Japan, and Japan was on the verge of surrender, the US dropped not one but two nuclear bombs, one each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war drumbeat against Iran on its so-called ‘nuclear program’ as a ‘perceived’ threat is hypocrisy at its extreme, when the only rogue nation that has used nuclear bombs against civilian population is the US. It is never mentioned in the popular narrative in the US; there is incredible hypocrisy in US power and media establishments. The second atomic bomb was to tell USSR, the rising power and socialist state in Eastern Europe, in very clear terms that US had more than one nuclear bomb. Death of millions of people and its horrible aftermath on future generation was of little or no interest to imperialist policy makers.

1949 was remarkable in the sense that independence of China was considered as a ‘loss’ in elite power circles in the US. The planners were aghast at this ‘loss’ when they considered China solely ‘their’ territory. This underlying principle of ‘we own the world’ so any ‘dissidence, or independence or sovereignty by nation states is completely unacceptable.

Then it was Korea (1950-53) to dislodge Communist regime, when many North Korean cities were bombed and the US twice threatened to use nuclear bomb. When military targets were all destroyed, civilian were made targets in indiscriminate bombings. The Communist regime however survived, though the dream of unity of North and South Korea was forever shattered. The independence of North Korea continues to be an eyesore for US war mongers, and with client state of South Korea it continues to provoke North Korea into war. North Korea rescinded armistice treaty with South Korea recently when US bombers violated North Korean air space. Full scale military drills with South Korea have become routine provocation techniques. The US has now moved F-22 fighters to their South Korean base.

In 1958, US deployed marines to intervene in Lebanon, and Iraq was threatened with nuclear attack if it invaded Kuwait. This often overlooked crisis helped brought US foreign policy head to head with Arab nationalists, who under the given threatening circumstances supported region’s monarchies. Iran was another example in the middle-east of US intervention when the Shah was deposed to establish a regime favorable to US.

In the early 1960s, the US intervened in the Caribbean, starting in 1961 with failed Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba. The CIA trained and harbored Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. The conviction for that came only recently when the prime accused was in his late 80s. Before that he had a good life in Miami roaming freely. In 1965 bombing mission and invasion of the Dominican Republic was carried out during an election campaign. During the Cold War, the CIA helped to support or install pro-US dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries around the world.

The fear of ‘domino effect’ of more countries venturing on the path of communism brought the US to war in Indochina (1960-75) that put US against North Vietnam. The aim was to defeat communist rebels fighting to overthrow pro-US dictatorships in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. A hoax incident of Gulf of Tonkin was used as an excuse to invade Vietnam and ‘carpet bomb’ guerilla forces and civilians alike. The poor peasants in mainly agrarian Vietnam were killed mercilessly with incidents like ‘Massacre of Mai Lai’ similar to Jalianwala Bagh incident in India. US war planners made little or no distinction between civilians and guerrillas in rebel-held zones, in “carpet-bombing” the countryside and cities. Over two million people were killed in the war, including 55,000 US troops though ultimately being driven out. In Cambodia, the bombings drove the Khmer Rouge rebels toward fanatical leaders, who launched a murderous rampage when they took power in 1975.

After far-east and Indochina adventures, in 1980s, attention was turned towards southern neighbors of the US when Reagan came in power. The fear of ‘domino effect’ as in Vietnam and Indochina region reverberated in Central America during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration intervened to protect pro-US regimes and destroy any left and democratic movements. El Salvador posed a direct threat to capitalist-imperialist order and it was dealt with rightist death squads that slaughtered Salvadoran civilians who questioned the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands. Right-wing exiled forces fought the new leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, where the CIA-trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels launched terrorist attacks against civilian clinics and schools run by the Sandinista government, and mined Nicaraguan harbors. US troops also invaded the island nation of Grenada in 1983, to oust a new military regime, attacking Cuban civilian workers (even though Cuba had backed the leftist government deposed in the coup), and accidentally bombing a hospital. US forces invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the nationalist regime of Manuel Noriega. The US accused its former ally of allowing drug-running in the country, though the drug trade actually increased after his capture. US bombing raids on Panama City ignited a conflagration in a civilian neighborhood, fed by stove gas tanks. Over 2,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion to capture one leader.

The US also returned in force to the Middle East in 1980, after the Shiite Muslim revolution in Iran against Shah Pahlevi’s pro-US dictatorship. A troop and bombing raid to free US Embassy hostages held in downtown Tehran had to be aborted in the Iranian desert. After the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, US Marines were deployed in a neutral “peacekeeping” operation. They instead took the side of Lebanon’s pro-Israel Christian government against Muslim rebels, and US Navy ships rained enormous shells on Muslim civilian villages. Embittered Shiite Muslim rebels responded with a suicide bomb attack on Marine barracks, and for years seized US hostages in the country. In retaliation, the CIA set off car bombs to assassinate Shiite Muslim leaders. Syria and the Muslim rebels emerged victorious in Lebanon. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the US launched a 1986 bombing raid on Libya, which it accused of sponsoring a terrorist bombing later tied to Syria. The bombing raid killed civilians, and may have led to the later revenge bombing of a US jet over Scotland. Libya’s Arab nationalist leader Muammar Qaddafi remained in power. The US Navy also intervened against Iran during its war against Iraq in 1987-88, sinking Iranian ships and “accidentally” shooting down an Iranian civilian jetliner.

African National Congress (ANC) for a long time remained a terrorist outfit, until the US stopped supporting the horrible apartheid in South Africa in late eighties.

In 1990, the US deployed forces in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which turned Washington against its former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein (a former CIA agent). US supported the Kuwaiti monarchy and the Muslim fundamentalist monarchy in neighboring Saudi Arabia against the secular nationalist Iraq regime. In January 1991, the US and its allies unleashed a massive bombing assault against Iraqi government and military targets with an intensity that far exceeded the raids of World War II and Vietnam. The Western media described the night bombings as ‘fireworks’ and presented a sanitized, celebratory image devoid of any death, destruction and brutality of the bombings. Nearly 200,000 Iraqis were killed in the war and its immediate aftermath of rebellion and disease, including many civilians who died in their villages, neighborhoods, and bomb shelters. The US continued economic sanctions that denied health and energy to Iraqi civilians, who died by the hundreds of thousands, according to United Nations agencies. About 5 million Iraqi children died due to lack of basic medicines. Madeline Albright even till date declares proudly that that was the right thing to do, and the ‘right’ price for Iraqis to pay. It was finally in 2003 invasion of Iraq when Saddam Hussein was captured and killed leaving Iraq in shambles rife with sectarian violence.

The covert operations of the 1980s under Reagan no longer remained so covert in 1990s. A new phrase needed to be invented for ‘just wars’ waged by ‘the city on the hill;’ now these direct attacks, invasions, bombings, regime changes led by the US military came to be known as “humanitarian interventions” to save civilians from their current regimes no matter however many civilians needed to die for this ‘noble cause.’ In 1992 the US military intervened in the African nation of Somalia, torn by famine and a civil war between clan warlords. Instead of remaining neutral, the US forces took the side of one faction against another faction, and bombed a Mogadishu neighborhood. Enraged crowds, backed by foreign Arab mercenaries, killed 18 US soldiers, forcing a withdrawal from the country. Hollywood made movies (Platoon) on the ‘courage’ of its soldiers in a foreign land. The question ‘why’ US troops have to be in distant lands and countries, countries which majority of Americans haven’t even heard about, is never posed.

Other so-called “humanitarian interventions” were centered in the Balkan region of Europe, after the 1992 breakup of the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia. The US watched for three years as Serb forces killed Muslim civilians in Bosnia, before its launched decisive bombing raids in 1995. This was the time of President Bill Clinton. Even then, it never intervened to stop atrocities by Croatian forces against Muslim and Serb civilians, because those forces were aided by the US In 1999, the US bombed Serbia to force President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw forces from the ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo, which was torn a brutal ethnic war. The bombing intensified Serbian expulsions and killings of Albanian civilians from Kosovo, and caused the deaths of thousands of Serbian civilians, even in cities that had voted strongly against Milosevic. When a NATO occupation force enabled Albanians to move back, US forces did little or nothing to prevent similar atrocities against Serb and other non-Albanian civilians. The US was viewed as a biased player, even by the Serbian democratic opposition that overthrew Milosevic the following year.

After the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa, the US “retaliated” not only against Osama Bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan, but a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was mistakenly said to be a chemical warfare installation. Bin Laden retaliated by attacking a US Navy ship docked in Yemen in 2000. The 9/11 attacks on Twin Towers in 2001 have resulted in virtual destruction of Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan has been bombed to stone ages. The soils of Afghanistan have been a perpetual playground for imperial adventures, with a common final cause of ‘liberating people.’ Osama bin laden was finally captured and killed in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. The sovereignty of Pakistan with its leaders in cahoots has been shred to a minimal veneer. The ‘collateral damage’ in the case of Afghanistan comprised hundreds of women and children, with hateful night raids and drone attacks on family gatherings. Drone attacks, torture, indiscriminate killings, persecution of whistle-blowers like Bradley Manning are legacies of Obama administration. Obama competes for being the worst President in the history of the United States. The abhorrent policies in Afghanistan, if at all achieved anything was to strengthen Taliban, a brutal and repressive group, thus a natural ally for the US which can keep population on leash. Obama escalated drone warfare and made it a permanent US policy of US interventions. Bush Jr. appears like a mere fanatical religious thug in comparison to smooth and suave mafioso Obama, full with rhetoric and dedicated to serve the interests of Wall Street.

None of the above countries which the US attacked, invaded and bombed or posed any direct threat to the US. They were mostly militarily weak countries incapable of defending themselves against the military might of the US. There is no more diplomacy in the US foreign policy, there are only military solutions, and the brunt of it is taken by militarily weaker countries. It’s like the mafia, where if a shopkeeper refuses to pay his dues, he is punished harshly to make an example of the consequences of disobedience, no matter how meager and inconsequential the dues of the shopkeeper are to the mafia. With annihilation of Iraq and Afghanistan, new enemies were desperately sought for; when war drumbeats against Iran bore no fruit given overwhelming international support of Iran for its peaceful nuclear program, North Korea suddenly popped up. Without any reason, the war games with South Korea were raised to war like levels. It is the nuclear capability of North Korea that forced US to finally halt its war games with South Korea, and extreme provocations like flying its bombers over North Korea. North Korea remains a sore for the US for its sovereignty and independence, which is absolutely intolerable to the US. The constant assertion and display of power to keep most of the world ‘under check’ needs constant enemies to fight against and has become a necessity for the imperial system to get unhindered access.

Complete revolution is the only answer. Piecemeal reforms will never ever emancipate humanity, and allow it to soar to new heights of social order, social relations, interactions, creativity, peace and humanity. The very capitalist-imperialist system needs to be swept away that is the underlying cause of wider human misery. The popular uprisings and revolts in many parts of the world are a direct reflection of the contradiction inherent in capitalism where the production is socialized but its benefits are privatized. People are finally coming to see how the capitalist-imperialist system works against their own interests and benefits only the rich. Still, handle on class antagonisms on economic basis remains elusive to bourgeoisie intelligentsia and common mass, putting limits on diverse movements like environment, social justice, gender equality etc. So, even a proliferation of such movements in present times has not been able to achieve any radical change in society. Dictators like Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi from Libya was removed but the countries relegated into chaos, there was no political leadership or party that could understand the class dynamics and lead the population to the correct path of radical change and true emancipation. Added to it was the false understanding that US and NATO would help the populace, not analyzing their imperial nature were key to failures of such popular movements. The analysis of these popular movements needs far more space than can be allotted here.

To finally quote Lenin, the basic features of imperialism are: (1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. World War I is a classic example of imperialism, when colonial powers competed and warred with each other for resources. Points (4) and (5) above inevitably lead to wars and consequent creation of new enemies; and that’s what is manifested in US imperialism in a unipolar world.

Imperialism keeps patriarchy in place as it is beneficial to it; half population is already suppressed into servile existence, providing free enslaved work. The social ramifications of patriarchy like rape are glossed over to keep the system in place. It favors dictators because then it does not have to deal with a rebelling populace and an agent in the form of a dictator enforces and protects interests of imperialism. Popular resistances of people, like against social atrocities, rape or demand of justice, participation are seen as a direct attack on the system as these cause fissures and cracks in this system and that is most frightening for its players.

(Shashwat Sinha is an Engineer and a Marxist who lives in Fremont CA USA. He writes to contribute to broader movement to change the world for better. The injustice and atrocities around him pain him and he expresses it through writing.)