Despite the enormous sufferings inflicted on the civilian population by the Occupation Forces, their "willing allies" and their private armies of mercenaries, imperialism cannot effectively control any area outside (even inside) the Green Zone in Baghdad and Kabul.
In Afghanistan, the barbaric actions of the US / NATO troops not only failed to stop the new upsurge of the guerillas in the South but have destabilized completely the Musharraf regime in Pakistan and the entire situation in the Indian subcontinent.
In Iraq, with the "surge" of 30.000 new troops ordered by Bush, his desperate effort to change the chaotic situation in favor of the US hasn't obtained any results. The US has less control than ever. The Maliki government of stooges exists only in name inside its US protected offices in Baghdad. Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias are the real actors in most of the country- apart from the Kurdish North. The US, despite its gigantic military offensive, has to rely mainly on the support of Talabani's and Barzani's Kurdish Peshmergas (apart from the 160.000 US soldiers and the 180.000 US paid private contractors) to surf on the chaos. This fact has enormous side effects: it provoked tensions between Ankara and Washington as the Turkish Army officially declares that it prepares for an invasion in the Iraqi North to attack the PKK Kurdish guerilla bases. These war preparations precipitated a regime crisis, which was building up for a long time, and early elections as the Army clashed with the moderate Islamist Erdogan government.
The other pillar on which US imperialist presence in Iraq stands is the Shiite religious leaderships under the influence of Teheran used as a buffer and as a weapon against the mainly secular, Baathist led Sunni insurgency. While Shiite militias are far from being obedient to the US occupation authorities and have clashed many times militarily with them, at the moment that Teheran's influence on Iraqi Shias is most needed by Washington, the neo-conservatives in the US Administration and Pentagon are pushing for a military offensive against Iran. Vice President Cheney, Bush's former UN Ambassador John Bolton, large numbers of the religious Right and of the Zionist lobby in US, as well as of the Zionist hawks in Tel Aviv are demanding a war against Iran, with the pretext of its nuclear program. The same ultra reactionary warmongers call for new wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as against Syria.
The impasse is accumulating conditions for new war explosions and threats to all the peoples in the region and internationally. But at the same time the war deadlock drives deeper the political regime crisis in America itself. It ignites the anti-war feelings of the popular masses, as it was clearly shown in mass mobilizations as well as in the electoral defeat of the Republicans in the midterm elections of November 2006. It deepens the splits within the US ruling class and within the State, sharpening and spreading the conflicts between the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. The escalation of the regime crisis is manifested with the CIA-gate, the scandalous protection of Libby's criminal activities, after his condemnation in court by the President himself, the forced replacement of a number of neo-conservative "super-stars" (Pearle, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz), the clash between the Judiciary and the Attorney General Gonzalez.
It is the worst regime crisis in United States after the Vietnam War and Watergate. The 2008 elections and a possible return of the Democrats to power cannot defuse it as the international program of the Democratic Party supports the continuing occupation of Iraq, albeit in a disguised form (military bases) and maintains a staunch support to Zionism; there is no essential difference between the two imperialist Parties. The international repercussions in the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, Russia and China are immense. America has become not solely the centre of the world economic crisis of capitalism but also of its political crisis.