Note from the editor.

The invasion began as we started work on this issue and now, as we go to press, Bush is declaring the war in Iraq is over. This issue's cover stories attempt to connect the war doctrine with U.S. aggression toward targets within its borders--among them racially scape-goated immigrants, political dissent, and the Bill of Rights.

April 25 marked the last deadline of "special registration," this one for immigrants from Bangladesh, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Kuwait. In San Francisco, a small band of protesters held vigil outside the renamed Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services building. That morning, the line snaked around the block--the policy called for immigrants from 25 countries to turn themselves in to immigration authorities for tracking. Hundreds have been detained as a result of coming forward. Thousands more have left in an exodus that remains largely invisible to most of the country, fixated on terror alerts and embedded TV footage.

As residents of the "homeland," we are all complicit and culpable if we continue with business as usual while this massively unjust reordering of our world takes place. Other stories in this issue underscore the danger of people of color being recruited to lend diversity, inside knowledge, and compliance to the government agenda. Through a variety of tactics, the feds are forcing or buying off our silence and cooperation--offering jobs in intelligence agencies and the army, knocking on doors for "voluntary interviews," making lists from mosque memberships, and lining up people for registration and internment. Immigration and counterterrorism measures are railroading activists and narrowing the space for all resisters.

But repression cannot kill all dissent. During the Vietnam War, the story of black soldiers who rebelled against the army's murderous racism is one example of how war and its effects can cleave along the issue of race. Another is that--despite appeals through posthumous citizenship, army educations and jobs, and the burden of proof to show patriotism--the majority of people of color do not support war.