Asian Marxist Review Editor's Note

The first reports of the Iraqi death toll under the occupation calculated by the US researchers and published in the British journal The Lancet give the horrifying figure of 655,000 Iraqis killed since the imperialist invasion in 2003. This means that one out of every 40 Iraqis has been killed as a result of the war. Imperialism has spilt enough blood to turn the waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris red.

In order to cling on to their position in Iraq, the imperialists foment sectarian strife which, and this may be their parting gift, threatens tragically to tear the country apart. The imperialists claimed in 2003 that their invasion would bring "freedom", "democracy", "respect for women", as well as "prosperity and dignity" to the people of Iraq.

In reality the invasion brought the freedom of US corporate culture, the democracy of the dollar and an Arab world ruled by corrupt kings and puppet presidents. Yet three years on the US is losing in Iraq. According to leaked CIA reports, 2007 will be even more violent than the previous years of occupation. The brutalities committed by US forces in Iraq already overshadow the monstrosities of the Mongols when they decimated Baghdad almost a thousand years ago. This criminal genocide shall come back with a vengeance for the imperialist murderers. In 1853 Karl Marx wrote on the criminal role of imperialism, "The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked."

A few years later he wrote, "To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed ail organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in human history like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself."

US imperialism faces not only a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Iraqi resistance, but faces the threat of a mass movement, which could explode at any time, in the United States itself. The unprecedented economic, political and social oppression of the American working class is quickly becoming intolerable. It is not simply a question of President Bush's approval ratings, which have fallen to historic lows, but a questioning of the whole system, the crisis of which has turned the American dream into a terrible nightmare.

The smashing of Israeli aggression in Lebanon has revealed that the Israeli state is not invincible. It was an invasion, whose success was predicated on re-igniting the flames of civil war which the people of Lebanon had done so much to douse. The conflict this summer was a battle in Washington's wider "war on terror". The assault in Lebanon was meant to pave the way to further aggression against Syria and Iran.

In backing Israel against the Lebanese resistance, the Americans sided with the enemy who is garroting Palestinians in Gaza.  

The defeat has shattered the myth of the protective power of the state of Israel amongst the Israeli masses. In the aftermath of this defeat the Israeli ruling class finds itself in a severe crisis. A fresh round of the class struggle is bound to erupt in Israel. Already there have been massive demonstrations in Israel against the corruption and callousness of the Israeli regime.

The strike of the Palestinian workers in Gaza also shows a new class instinct evolving out of nationalism. The corruption of the Palestinian Authority has rubbed salt into the wounds of the Palestinian, the victims of Zionist aggression and tyranny for generations. There is a renewed class-consciousness in the Palestinian movement. The defeat of Israel is a turning point in the politics of the whole of the Middle East and there will be revolutionary repercussions from Egypt to Morocco.

The nuclear test carried out by North Korea is a severe diplomatic defeat for US imperialism. The crisis is rapidly spinning out of control. The defiance of Pyongyang has called the bluff on the military capability of the United States. What can the imperialists do here? The tacit support for the military coup in Thailand also exposes the democratic hypocrisy of imperialism. In Iran, the US is being forced into beating another diplomatic retreat. In war, diplomacy, economics and politics imperialism's decline and decay are there for everybody to see. It is a colossus with feet of clay.

There is a rising tide of anti-imperialist struggles and revolution across Latin America. US imperialism, overstretched like Imperial Rome two thousand years ago, reels towards its demise. The point is that from its ashes it will not be anarchy and chaos, nor barbarism that arises but the socialist future of humanity. This won't happen by itself - we will have to do it.