Kerry vs. Bush? Iraq won't care...

Stephen Gowans explains why America's imperial agenda under Bush will not change under Kerry (excerpt):

....Starting from the Revolutionary War, the US has engaged in warlike activity somewhere in the world in three of every four years of its existence. And the prizes, for that part of the population that owns and controls the economy, have been rich indeed: land, mines, plantations, oil and energy rights, export markets, low-wage labor, and military bases -- hundreds of them in scores of countries, outposts to guarantee that more and more of the world is open to US exports and investment, whether the indigenous population likes it or not. And how many aggressions has the US been involved in since 1999, a mere half-decade? Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again. US militarism hardly looks like a policy of a group of people in power. It looks more like something that is built in -- systemic and hoary and bound to carry on in the usual fashion no matter whose name plate sits on the desk in the Oval Office. Which says that getting rid of the group now in power, and replacing it with another group -- as has been done time and time again in US history -- isn't going to change what makes the US go to war, or outrage the sovereignty of others. That's all the more true, given that the presumptive Democrat contender to the White House, John Kerry, looks more like Bush on steroids than Bush-lite when it comes to foreign policy questions. Kerry says his military will be bigger than Bush's, and that he too will use force preventively and unilaterally. And recently he pledged that, unlike Bush, he'd get the job done in Cuba. Castro, and all his intolerable baggage -- full-employment, free health care, and free education -- would be swept away, to be replaced by the phony freedom and democracy Iraqis are so grateful the US is ramming down their throats. Sadly, the Left will line up behind this right-wing, pro-imperialist anyway -- stupidly, desperately, unsure what do to, but to toss the dice once again, in a fixed game. And if that's not as absurd as the US staying in Iraq over the objections of a vast majority of Iraqis, for democracy, what is?

Solution? Elect DENNIS KUCINICH.