Is US imperialism in Iraq today the same as classic “high imperialism”?
To equate the US in Iraq now with classic “high imperialism” – say, the Japanese in China in the 1930s – and the clerical-fascist militias with the Guomindang is, it seems to me, like equating a plain with a forest because the plain also has some trees similar to those in the forest. I’m against the USA having permanent military bases in Iraq. I’m also against the USA having permanent military bases in Britain, but those bases do not prove Britain to be a US colony. History shows that the post-1945 USA having permanent military bases in a country, even large ones in a poor country, is not the same as that country becoming a colony in the sense of the old “high imperialism” which dominated the late 19th century and most of the 20th century but ended in the West in 1975 with the Portuguese retreat from Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Japan has had huge US military bases since the end of World War Two – and moreover has been forced to pay for them – and was extremely poor compared
