No, CODEPINK, Donald Trump Is NOT Making a “Positive Contribution to the Peace Process”—He Is, Like the Neocons and Democrats Who Oppose Him, a Bloody-Jawed Imperialist!
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In late December, when Trump announced he was withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria and slashing troop levels in Afghanistan, some progressives hailed it as a move toward peace. The activist antiwar group CODEPINK applauded Trump’s decision as “a positive contribution to the peace process” which “decreases the tensions between the United States and Iran.”
Others on “the left” suffered similar bouts of amnesia, seeming to suddenly forget they were talking about the same Donald Trump who has escalated U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s slaughter in Yemen, backed Israel’s mass killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters, stepped up drone strikes in one country after another, announced the very threatening U.S. withdrawal from a key U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty, and wondered aloud why he couldn’t use America’s nukes.
Trump is not a “peacenik” or isolationist, and he’s not doing the “right thing for the wrong reasons.” He’s a fascist representative of the capitalist-imperialist system. That system cannot function without exploiting the masses of humanity and battling its rivals to violently dominate and oppress vast stretches of the globe. And U.S. imperialism in particular is running up against real limits in its ability to defend and extend its domination.
The Trump/Pence regime has a different approach than the Democratic (and even most “mainstream” Republican) imperialists to keeping “America First” among global predators given the contradictions it faces around the world. The regime has no intention of “abandoning” the Middle East, but they can’t stand pat, with U.S. forces tied down where they’re stalemated or losing, either. So Trump aims to franchise out some regional battles to its butcher allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, while turning America’s machinery of death and destruction toward bigger fish—with potentially even more catastrophic consequences: gearing up now to confront Iran, while preparing strategically to take on China.
Latest case in point: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s bellicose speech in Cairo, Egypt, on Thursday. He assured the U.S.’s despotic clients in that part of the world that it will back them even more uncritically, and will defend America’s regional dominance even more aggressively: “We were timid about asserting ourselves” under Obama, Pompeo declared. He ratcheted up threats against Iran, promising that the U.S. “will not ease our campaign” against it, and provocatively threatened to “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria.
So no, Trump’s latest moves aren’t steps toward peace. They’re moves that may well heighten the danger of war, even cataclysmic war.
The reason for the seeming amnesia and real self-delusion pointed to at the top of this article is not ignorance, but resistance to the truth that imperialism is a system, not a set of policies. Bob Avakian has trenchantly put it this way:
Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.
And right now, when different factions within the U.S. ruling class battle it out for supremacy, including which policy will best achieve imperialist objectives, we should also keep the second part of that quote in mind as well:
Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism. (BAsics 1:6)
Trump is not a “peacenik” or isolationist, and he’s not doing the “right thing for the wrong reasons.” Donald Trump has escalated U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s slaughter in Yemen, as shown here, 2017. (Photo: AP)
Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.
Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:6
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