Ahoy! No Change Ahead.... Steady as she goes...

Of all the empires in history, the United States will go down as one of the most aggressive and least inspiring. After nearly 160 years of warfare and imperial conquest, US policy, and the war machine it marshalled, has left nothing in its tracks but death and destruction, with no lasting cultural value. Five years after the US invasion, Iraq lies in ruins. Divided, violent, depleted, unstable, rife with sectarian war, a hotbed of terrorism and with 20 per cent of its population killed, wounded, displaced or in asylum in neighbouring countries, Iraq bears no resemblance to its recent past. Meanwhile, allied regimes in the Arab Middle East, which the Bush administration vowed to democratise after invading Iraq, are now more entrenched, more autocratic than ever.

Some people may contest the fact that the US is an imperial power that dominates the world, or most of it. This is either due to self-effacing denial or the legendary American sense of self- righteousness. Drawing on the parallel historical examples of the 16th to 19th century age of colonialism, they will challenge any claimant to point out where American colonial dominion is, the colonised peoples or the colonial governments that rules over them. Little do they know about US neo-colonialism, sprawling American military bases spread around the globe, the 13 American naval armada canvassing the seas and oceans or the hundreds of billions of US dollars spent on them in the name of American security and spreading democracy. According to the US Department of Defense annual Base Structure Report for 2003, which lists foreign and domestic military bases, the US rents or owns 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries, in addition to 6,000 bases in the US and its territories. The report excludes huge US military, naval and air force bases in the Arabian Gulf, the Middle East and Afghanistan. The US Department of Defense deploys 253,288 uniformed personnel and an approximately equal number of civilian personnel, technicians and non-uniformed military and civilian contractors.

In April 2003, the Bush administration and its cohorts conveniently estimated that the Iraq conquest would cost $1.7 billion, part of which would be offset by the participating "coalition of the willing". Allies Britain, Germany, Canada, Norway and Japan would pay the costs of reconstruction, in addition to the expected Iraqi oil revenue. That was in 2003. But according to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and a respected former World Bank vice- president, the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 will reach $845 billion "for military operations, reconstruction, embassy costs, enhanced security at US bases and foreign aid programmes". In his most recent book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Stiglitz states: "A trillion dollars could have built an additional eight million housing units; could have hired some 15 million additional public school teachers for one year; could have paid for 120 million children to attend a year of Head Start; insured 530 million children for healthcare for one year; or provided 43 million students with four-year scholarships at public universities."

How much the losing Iraq war is costing the US treasury, financially as well as politically, is increasingly a matter of public debate in the US, as much as the Vietnam War was a matter of public outrage 40 years ago. Except for the Vietnam War, the Iraq war -- now in its sixth year -- is the longest and most costly war in the post-independence history of the US. It has lasted longer than the American Civil War, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish- American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the first Gulf War, not to mention the series of brutal guerrilla wars incited by the Reagan administration in South America during the 1980s.

The five-year long Iraq war has led the world's most feared imperial power to infamy and bankruptcy. It has wreaked untold suffering and destruction on the ancient land of Iraq and its population, all to the benefit of US mega- corporations like Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root, and the Pentagon's paramilitary and civilian contractors. The US and its coalition, who defied the UN Security Council and invaded Iraq, owe the country and its people huge reparations for their wanton destruction.

As many polls have indicated, all the Iraqis want -- except their Maliki government -- is for the US to leave and let them lick their wounds, unite their families, mourn their dead, repatriate their refugees, mend sectarian differences and establish a new Iraqi order without American interference.

When Hitler trampled across Europe Occupying countries, we called it War Crimes, we pulled together and defeated him. When the US has spent years using various methods to occupy or control countries, we call it spreading democracy or defending human rights. What do you think the people in those countries call it ..... OCCUPATION ..... do you think they want the world to pull together and defeat the US ??
Will any US President change the way they intrude around the world ? of course not. But the day will come when they will be defeated!