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By the fall of 2008, many among the capitalist elite and within the agencies of the U.S. government had concluded that the U.S. would have its first (and hopefully only) black president. It was also in the fall that the U.S. Strategic Command (AFRICOM) was created. The clear objective of U.S. policy in Africa, as spelled out by U.S. State Department advisor to AFRICOM Dr. J. Peter Pham in 2007, was “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.”

In line with the historic role of capitalist development in Africa, a capitalist relationship that at its core has always been dependent on violence and plunder, is it an incredulous position to conclude that the real interest of the U.S. policy in Nigeria is less a concern with the lives of Nigerian girls and more with bringing key strategic areas in Africa under their control in order to block the Chinese?

while all of us mourn for the more than 200 girls who have been kidnapped and can only imagine what their families must be going though, we also have to make sure that we don’t allow the very real emotion of the issue to cloud our analysis – something that is probably easier for us who are not directly impacted. We have to do this because it is precisely at these moments that we have to be clear-eyed and not allow ourselves to be manipulated.

while all of us mourn for the more than 200 girls who have been kidnapped and can only imagine what their families must be going though, we also have to make sure that we don’t allow the very real emotion of the issue to cloud our analysis – something that is probably easier for us who are not directly impacted. We have to do this because it is precisely at these moments that we have to be clear-eyed and not allow ourselves to be manipulated.

The aggressive posture of U.S. imperialism over the last few years has proceeded with very little organized opposition from the capitalist center in the U.S. Not just because of the institutional weakness of left and progressive forces but, even more ominously, because of the ideological collaboration and alignment by left forces with the imperial project. This latter phenomenon is more characteristic of positions taken by some of the more chauvinistic elements of the white left than our ranks, but even within our ranks the confusion seems to be increasing when, for example, you look at the positions taken by some on Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the U.S. NATO assault on Libya.