Eighteen years ago today—motivated by the arrogance of white invincibility and the absence of a countervailing power with the collapse of the Soviet Union—the United States launched its criminal attack on the people and the nation of Iraq. This would be the second assault in less than two years, with the other being in Afghanistan. Two wars in two theaters simultaneously was thought to be manageable because the psychopathology of white supremacy had informed and continues to inform the U.S. worldview.

But millions of lives later—with the destruction of ancient cities and millions displaced—the only thing the United States has achieved is exposing to the world that it is a paper tiger and a rogue state that deserves no respect.

Today, the U.S. rogue state, now under a different regime but with the same mission, is still in Iraq. But it is now under fire from the very people who it pretended it was liberating. And the people of the world saw through this effort to re-colonize the so-called “Middle East.”

But what about in the United States?

The United States is a country in which war has become normalized. The people in some ways appear to be numbed by war, as the corporate propagandists shift their attention to China—preparing the population again for yet another criminal assault.

But we, in the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), will not surrender to apathy. We say today that the United States must leave Iraq, must leave Afghanistan, must leave Syria, and must close its global bases and command structures. The world demands peace. But we know there can be no peace without justice. For justice, the oppressed, the exploited and the nationally oppressed must be willing to fight for it. We stand with the people of Iraq and with all those who yearn for peace and a new world, free from the cult of death that the United States continues to uphold.

Banner photo: A convoy of U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMVW), assigned to D/Company, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marines Division, arrives in Northern Iraq, during a sandstorm. USMC personnel are in Iraq in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Several vehicles are equipped with Tube-launched Optically-tracked Wire-guided (TOW) missile launchers. (LTCpl Andrew P. Roufs, USMC)