Re: 400 dead in Iraq

[Robin Maisel <robinmaisel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Although the outcry against the war will continue to grow, it is not so
much the number of casualties as the nature of the operation they are
engaged in.  The US ruling class doesn't care about the numbers (recall
the 58,000 dead GIs not to mention the 2-5 million Vietnamese,
Cambodians and Laotians).  What the US ruling class fears, although it
is inevitable, is the spread  of anti-imperialist ideas and actions
around the globe and within the US as well.  For mass murderers 400 is
meaningless as they have already stated their intentions to use every
available weapon, including nuclear weapons, in the struggle to re-carve
up the worlds markets and resources.  However, the workers and farmers
in the imperialist "homelands" face ruin alongside their fellow workers
and farmers (peasants) and their political reaction is certainly a worry
to Washington, Wall Street, Fleet Street, Hamburg, Tokyo, Paris, etc.
U.S. imperialism also worries about its competitors who made money in
Iraq for a decade while the U.S. was frozen out.  For the ruling classes
the numbers that they are concerned about relate to the falling rate of
profit, and not the casualties.
For workers and farmers and all the oppressed and exploited world wide,
including in the U.S., the inability of the capitalist system to provide
any security or peace impels them toward rethinking things, organizing
and acting.  Marx stated that the British workers could not be free so
long as the Irish were colonized by Britain.  For over a century toilers
in the biggest imperialist powers were bribed and fooled into supporting
their ruling classes (including their wars) because imperialism
"delivered the goods" (on the sweat and blood of the colonized peasants
and workers).  That is becoming less and less feasible.  Being
determines consciousness.
Robin Maisel
10/24/03



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