It has become rather apparent in recent years that the foreign policy of the United States has adopted several critical strategems now that the US is convinced it is top dog in the world and can prevail at will.  If ever there was a rogue state, the US is it.  Just look at the totally lop-sided UN votes on issue after issue.
        In the realm of nuclear weapons the US has decided that the way to dominate now is to create weapons of such superiority in technology and numbers that other nations will conclude that is not worth the time, effort and money it would take to even keep up and will decide to throw in the towel.  In other words, the idea of mutually assured destruction that reigned during the period when the Soviet Union was a powerhouse has been replaced by mutually assured destruction of one side only.
         This is in close conjunction with another prime concept.  The United States intends to create a nuclear shield and place it over North America through which few missiles from an opponent can penetrate.  In effect, that would mean that the US could attack any nation on the earth any time it felt like doing so and need fear no effective reprisal as a consequence.  Henceforth, the nations of the earth would be held in permanent hostage and totally under the thumb of the US.
         Another central concept coming to the fore in American foreign policy is that states will not only be prevented from stock-piling weapons that actually amount to something but will even be prevented from testing same.  The North Korean firing of a test missile out into the Pacific was clearly designed not to create a weapon to attack the US but to create a weapon ensuring that if the US attacked North Korea it would pay a real price.  It was the test of a defensive weapon only, lacking sufficient range to even reach the US, and the US government knows this quite well.  But the capitalists seek to portray weapons of this nature as offensive in order to have an excuse to attack if they ever wanted to justify unprovoked aggression to the American people.
         Another component of US military thinking is that wars of aggression by the US will henceforth be fought mainly at night, especially during the initial phase, because nighttime will, in effect, make US soldiers invisible to the enemy while US troops will have night-vision goggles and similar equipment on tanks, aircraft, rocket launchers, etc.
         Another very important component is that cameras operated by anyone other than US military agents will continue to be strictly forbidden in areas of combat, prison camps and “interrogation” centers.  Visual equipment is one resource that the US military fears more than most major weapons being operated by the enemy.  Indeed, it almost ranks with nuclear weapons themselves.  Why?  Because the US military is a vicious, loathsome, ruthless, merciless assaulter of opposing forces that follows no rules and would be apoplectic over the idea of the American people seeing what it has done behind-the-scenes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, and even Central America (during the reign of Rotten Ronnie Reagan).  The degree to which reporters and cameramen have been excluded from military actions since Vietnam is nothing short of appalling.  As that premier American spokesperson and newscaster, Walter Cronkite, said of the news coverage of the Gulf War: It was an abomination.  And how right he was.  American citizens were getting reports from people who were more than 50 miles from the fighting and in no better position to know what was going on than someone sitting in their living room in Chicago, Illinois.  The degree to which the US has departed from the days of Ernie Pyle, Bill Mauldin and even Morley Safer is truly staggering.  The US government has a total and visceral revulsion to reporters in general and cameras in particular because they would reveal acts committed in the name of the American people that millions of Americans, even many of a rightist philosophy, would vehemently oppose.  Americans would also be aghast at the amount of torture that is performed by the US military, especially when carried out by agents of foreign governments who then relay the information obtained to American agents.  If cameras were present the number of Americans opposed to American military and intelligence policies throughout the world would skyrocket and the US ruling class is fully aware of that fact.  Disseminating dynamite information of this caliber could easily forestall the US government acting in many areas and in many ways because objections and demonstrations by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would be a very potent force.  The ruling class wants free reign.
         With respect to the current Iraqi situation the position of the Left forces throughout the world should be unmistakable and united.  Any attack upon Iraq is to be completely opposed and viewed as totally anathema.  I rarely quote capitalist sources but on occasion someone gets it right.  During the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson gave a speech in which he said, “Aggression unchecked is aggression unleashed.”  How right he was.  The Left should oppose an attack on Iraq not because the Left supports that killer of Leftists and progressives, Saddam Hussein, but because the American appetite for compliant states will only grow if victory is obtained.  The US has already formulated an “Axis of Evil” list showing that it has a roster of targets and will not rest until any government that seriously opposes its foreign policy and seeks an independent stance is a candidate for aggression and overthrow.   It would only be a matter of time under this scenario before socialist states such as North Korea and Cuba could easily be on the to-be-hit docket.   Fighting for Iraq is not a fight for Hussein but a struggle to forestall the emergence of aggression against socialism itself.