Harris and Walz form “Team A” of US Imperialism

The Harris-Walz ticket will not change the U.S. commitment to war and imperialism.  In fact, it will expand it under the cover of domestic liberalism.

Tim Walz is a retired master Army sergeant and long-time member of the National Guard.  He has voted to fund almost every way the U.S. has fought since 2007. He has actually voted to the right of many Democrats when it comes to funding U.S. wars.

Walz is also a proud supplier of weapons to Israel, a committed Zionist, and a hero to rightwing and pro-Zionist Jewish groups in the U.S. in both the Republican and Democratic Parties. For instance, he is backed by the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. He spoke before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in 2010 saying “Israel is our truest and closest ally in the region, with a commitment to values of personal freedoms and liberties, surrounded by a pretty tough neighborhood.”

As a congressman he voted in favor of sending billions in unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, he cosponsored a number of pro-Israel measures, including one in favor of renewing a 10-year memorandum to send billions of dollars in US military aid. He voted to fund the Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile batteries.  He made a pilgrimage to Israel in 2009 to affirm support for Netanyahu, and has since defended the war criminal. He also voted in favor of a resolution that condemned the United Nations for deciding that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal. In 2023, he pledged on social media to support Biden’s campaign of genocide, claiming that “We cannot let terrorists like Hamas win.” He has never supported Palestinians and has actively opposed the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. His choice as V.P. by Harris has been duly cheered in Israel.

Liberals and progressives and some on the Left will point to Walz’s support for abortion and LGBTQ rights as reasons to vote for him.  We cannot be bamboozled.  The U.S. working-class and the international working-class will always fight imperialism’s wars.  The people of Palestine will pay with blood for Harris-Walz’s enthusiastic support for Zionism and US imperialism.

If liberals and progressives want to understand the connection between wars abroad and at home they can look to Walz’s actions as Governor when he called out the National Guard to put down protests in Minneapolis against the police murder of George Floyd. When he was criticized by the Right for not reacting sooner, he called his delay a “failure,” spoke to Donald Trump, and reassured the police he would act more forcefully.

Walz is also an economic imperialist and slayer of indigenous rights. He approved a permit for construction of the Line 3 pipeline carrying oil from Alberta, Canada across Anishaabe treaty lands to Superior, Wisconsin. Construction of Line 3 went ahead over the bodily protests of arrested indigenous protest leaders and their supporters.

Taysha Martineau, an activist from the Fond-du-Lac reservation, linked Walz’s allowing for the construction of this pipeline to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic, giving an emotional speech at one protest on behalf of her children: “As an Indigenous woman the statistic I am faced with is one in three… I have three daughters at home… which one?” You have buried us beneath this pipeline.”

The Harris-Walz ticket will bury more Palestinians, working-class soldiers sent to fight in the escalating imperial wars, Indigenous people, and the Left in their drive towards war, the accumulation of greater profits for capital, and in their execution of the imperatives of US empire.  The Democratic Party remains one of the most dangerous capitalist parties in the world, now aiming to pick up where Genocide Joe Biden left off. Harris and Walz are the party’s new flag bearers, and intend to captain the ship of US empire more handily and effectively than the far-right B team of Trump and Vance.

The revolutionary Left must come to Chicago to build a true socialist alternative that puts people before profits, peace before war, and international working-class unity before Zionism and empire.