These attacks against civilian population centers constitute war crimes. They are being carried out with the deliberate aim of intimidating the growing popular resistance to the US occupation. The Iraqi dead surely number in the hundreds, though a precise figure is not known. Many hundreds more men, women and children have been wounded as rockets, shells and heavy machine-gun fire rain down on densely populated urban neighborhoods.

American working people must demand an immediate halt to this slaughter and the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq. The claim that this violence is justified retaliation for attacks on Iraq's occupiers merits only contempt.

What is unfolding in Iraq is an uprising by the country's most oppressed workers and, in response, a brutal campaign of colonial subjugation. While mouthing phrases about democracy, the US government—Democrats and Republicans alike—is seeking to drown the democratic aspirations of the Iraqi working people in blood.

The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, giving full-throated support to the US colonial enterprise in Iraq, has criticized the Bush administration for seeking to cede authority to the Iraqis too soon. "I think they wanted to get the troops out and get the transfer out of the way as fast as possible without regard to the stability of Iraq," Kerry declared.

How is that "stability" to be achieved? It requires the ruthless repression of all those who oppose the US domination of Iraq and believe that the country should be run by the Iraqi people themselves, rather than US proconsuls, generals and corporate profiteers.

The Democratic program amounts to a protracted bloodbath to secure the control of US corporations and banks over the oil wealth of Iraq and the entire region. To prosecute this policy, Kerry and others in the Democratic leadership have repeatedly demanded that the number of US occupation troops be increased, ensuring that US casualties—already reaching nearly 625 dead and many thousands wounded—likewise mount.

This is the policy that is being peddled by those who claim the struggle against war and reaction must be reduced to the slogan of "anybody but Bush"—that is, the replacement of a Republican administration by a Democratic one. It means support for continued war and occupation in Iraq, and the attacks on democratic rights and social conditions that are the inevitable domestic expression of this militarist policy.

The Socialist Equality Party places at the center of its election platform the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US and "coalition" troops from Iraq.

American soldiers were sent to war based on the lie that they were protecting the American people from weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, and liberating the Iraqi people. They are now being ordered to carry out actions that many know are morally indefensible. It is imperative that they be taken out of harm's way before more are killed or irreparably maimed, both physically and psychologically.

Against Kerry and other Democrats who claim that "failure is not an option" in Iraq, we insist that "failure" is both inevitable and necessary. A US "success" in the recolonization of Iraq by means of military aggression, mass killings and violent repression would only set the stage for even bloodier imperialist crimes.

A defeat for the US government in Iraq would represent a devastating setback for American imperialism. It would intensify popular opposition to militarism, and thoroughly discredit the neo-colonialist agenda of the US ruling elite.

As the devastating consequences of this "war of choice" become increasingly obvious to the broad mass of working people, the demand for the full exposure and punishment of those responsible for this criminal enterprise will grow.

Against the program of militarism, global hegemony and colonial conquest supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, the SEP advocates a socialist foreign policy that would guarantee the right of the working people of the Middle East to determine their own political destiny and control the natural resources of their region.

full story:
www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/iraq-a07.shtml