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February-4, 2020 - On Thursday, January 30, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced that the United States government is going ahead with the sale of Patriot missile defense systems in Iraq. The excuse given by Trump's cabinet and the U.S. Congress is that U.S. defense contractors are entitled to the best conditions for attaining monopoly-high profits.

In the manner of the feudal Kings, the Republican and Democratic parties use the economic power of the government to help the Pentagon arms merchants, the Wall Street bankers, the monopoly corporations and the billionaires rob the public treasury and redistribute the national income in favor of big capital.

The extension of U.S. imperialism's aggressive global network of military bases into Iraq is part of the brutal recolonization program of U.S. imperialism.

The large-scale sale of military equipment and training is part of U.S. imperialism's latest counter-insurgency strategy and tactics for building up a new puppet army and neo-colonial infrastructure. It goes hand in hand with the inherent tendencies towards greater and greater coalescence of the monopolies and the U.S. state. In the epoch of imperialism, the establishment of a personal union in the U.S. between the top men of the state apparatus and the financial oligarchy expresses itself in the fact that owners and executives of the big monopoly corporations frequently hold key administrative and military posts and are included in the leadership of the two political parties.

It is well known that there is a "revolving door" through which representatives of big capital continually move back and forth between their corporate suites, the Pentagon, the federal bureaucracy, the Congress, etc.

Altogether U.S. imperialism, acting like the military dictator and policeman of the world, has already deployed more than 250,000 troops in 156 countries.

The extent to which the rich have already gotten richer from the invasion of Iraq can be seen not only in the amount of so-called "reconstruction" contracts but also in the extent of foreign military sales to Iraq. Since 2011, the U.S. Congress has authorized over $30 billion in foreign military sales to Iraq, including the sale of Apache helicopters, F-16 jets, M1A1 Abrams tanks, Hellfire missiles, General Dynamics IAV Stryker vehicles, etc., etc., etc.

It is not the mythical threat of "global terrorist networks," but U.S. imperialism's growing fear of its inevitable defeat in Iraq that leads the two parties to continually seek ways to buy time for their war in Iraq. The militarization of Iraq is part of the brutal recolonization program of U.S. imperialism. In addition to keeping Iraq under the thumb of U.S. imperialism and denying the sovereign rights of the Iraqi people, the ongoing U.S. war and occupation aims to whip up a regional arms race and ignite international tensions.

The struggle against the U.S. war and occupation is uniting the overwhelming majority of people in Iraq. Political demonstrations and armed resistance to U.S. colonialism keep growing. In addition to demanding the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, people are demanding the restoration of the sovereign right of the Iraqi people to determine their own political and economic system.

The struggle to support the right of the Iraqi people to liberate their country and decide their own affairs completely free of outside interference is an important part of the struggle of the American people and the people of the whole world for recognition of the sovereign equality of every country and support for the right of oppressed nations to rise in struggle, using such means as they deem necessary, to secure their sovereign rights. For democratic-minded Americans, it is the very touchstone of anti-militarist, anti-imperialist struggle to oppose the national and colonial oppression imposed on other peoples by "our own government."