EDITORIAL
Obama Announces Endless War

Feb 16, 2015

“We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL,” President Obama declared in a speech he gave on February 11. It was Obama’s war speech, asking for war authorization from Congress.

Authorization? But Obama has been carrying out a bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq against ISIL (usually called ISIS, or Islamic State) for six months already!

No, this “authorization” was not about legalities–it was a declaration of intent that the U.S. would wage war where it wanted, when it wanted, for as long as it wanted.

Of course Obama “promised” in his speech that this would not be an endless war. Didn’t Bush say “mission accomplished” just seven weeks after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003? Didn’t Obama announce “the end” of that war four years ago? In recent months the U.S. has sent thousands of troops into Iraq again, for the third time since 1991.

Even in this same speech, Obama acknowledged these wars are endless. Speaking of the ongoing campaign against ISIS Obama said, “this strategy of taking out terrorists ... is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”

Yes, for years already. And in several countries. And without “authorization”!

The U.S. has been fighting wars all over the world for decades–under Obama, Bush, and other presidents before them. And with the support of both Republicans and Democrats, without “authorization” from Congress.

Just as U.S. capitalism wrings out profit from the workers it exploits in this country, so it attempts to do in countries all over the world, exploiting lower-paid workers, robbing the countries of their natural resources. This theft of the resources of the whole world by U.S. imperialism is what’s behind these wars. To steal from others, you need muscle and weapons to back you up. That’s what the U.S. military is: muscle for a thief!

The U.S. today possesses the mightiest military machine known in history. It uses the deadliest, most terrifying weapons known in history; terrorizing and uprooting hundreds of thousands of people; killing their loved ones; throwing them into refugee camps and into misery.

Wars the U.S. started have destabilized entire regions of the world and created new wars.

War is at the root of the capitalist system we live under. It’s a system first of all based on class war, waged by the capitalist class against the working class, to squeeze more profit out of the workers. It’s a system that throws the world into one economic crisis after the other.

War is the only answer the capitalist class has for the crises it creates. The “Great Recession,” which has proved to be endless for the working class, has been accompanied by endless war abroad–just like the Great Depression of the 1930s was followed by World War II in the 1940s.

We are in another world war, a third one if you will. Except that now, unlike 75 years ago, there is only one big power trying to dominate and control the rest of the world.

Some people in this country may live in a little cocoon–for now. But for humanity as a whole, the only perspective that capitalism has to offer is a world at permanent war and the extermination of peoples. The only future–until the working class roots out and replaces the capitalist class that produces war and impoverishment.