Klein: Baghdad Year Zero

[bemildred]

Just read it if you haven't yet.

It was only after I had been in Baghdad for a month that I found what
I was looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began,
at the height of what should have been a construction boom, but after
weeks of searching I had not seen a single piece of heavy machinery
apart from tanks and humvees. Then I saw it: a construction crane.
It was big and yellow and impressive, and when I caught a glimpse
of it around a corner in a busy shopping district I thought that I was
finally about to witness some of the reconstruction I had heard so
much about. But as I got closer I noticed that the crane was not
actually rebuilding anything - not one of the bombed-out government
buildings that still lay in rubble all over the city, nor one of the many
power lines that remained in twisted heaps even as the heat of
summer was starting to bear down. No, the crane was hoisting a
giant billboard to the top of a three-story building. SUNBULA:
HONEY 100% NATURAL, made in Saudi Arabia.

Seeing the sign, I couldn't help but think about something Senator
John McCain had said back in October. Iraq, he said, is "a huge pot
of honey that's attracting a lot of flies." The flies McCain was
referring to were the Halliburtons and Bechtels, as well as the
venture capitalists who flocked to Iraq in the path cleared by Bradley
Fighting Vehicles and laser-guided bombs. The honey that drew
them was not just no-bid contracts and Iraq's famed oil wealth but
the myriad investment opportunities offered by a country that had
just been cracked wide open after decades of being sealed off, first
by the nationalist economic policies of Saddam Hussein, then by
asphyxiating United Nations sanctions.

Looking at the honey billboard, I was also reminded of the most
common explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint
echoed by everyone from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired
in blood and deprivation because George W. Bush didn't have "a
postwar plan." The only problem with this theory is that it isn't true.
The Bush Administration did have a plan for what it would do after
the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much honey as possible, then
sit back and wait for the flies.

The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most
cherished belief of the war's ideological architects: that greed is
good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity,
and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates
growth, which creates jobs and products and services and
everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of
good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for
corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn
can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments,
even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove
their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological
advances, even George Bush's Republicans are, in their own minds,
perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions,
and alarmist environmentalists.

Autonomy & Solidarity

[billbuckhead]

1. Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban

"Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban: the one place on Earth where they could force everyone to live by the most literal, unyielding interpretation of their sacred texts. One would think that the bloody results of this experiment would inspire a crisis of faith: in the country where they had absolute free reign, where there was no local government to blame, where economic reforms were introduced at their most shocking and most perfect, they created, instead of a model free market, a failed state no right-thinking investor would touch. And yet the Green Zone neocons and their masters in Washington are no more likely to reexamine their core beliefs than the Taliban mullahs were inclined to search their souls when their Islamic state slid into a debauched Hades of opium and sex slavery. When facts threaten true believers, they simply close their eyes and pray harder."

<http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/855>

So much of our problem in Iraq is because of a failed economic plan? Bush is spreading his economic disaster plan all over the world and it doesn't work here or there.

[paulk]

2. I read this in Harpers

I'm not a big fan of Naomi Klein's - she sometimes lets her ideological leanings get in the way of good journalism - but this is an excellent piece of reporting.

The Bush junta has fucked up on so many levels in Iraq - it's mind numbing.

Supply side economics comes to Iraq - just unbelievable.

[bemildred]

3. I like it because it makes sense of things that occurred

in the early part of the occupation that were very bizarre
and that have otherwise never been explained, like the firing
of the Iraqi armed forces, and it explains the roles of Chalabi
and Allawi.

[paulk]

5. the appointment of Bremer, for sure

The original CPA administrater (can't recall his name), had to be gotten out of there - he actually had some good ideas. They not only had to get him out - they then trashed him as incompetent. The usual Bush family pattern.

The Iraq fuck up is so big, so overwhelming on every level that it's almost impossible to explain to people who aren't paying attention. The neocon plan was based on a fantasy - a version of the world that existed in their heads. Seymour Hersh called it "fantastical".

-----

This is the kind of story our mainstream media should be reporting.

[MissMarple]

4. Good catch, I read this in Harper's but didn't have a link.

The companion article re the Republican propaganda machine by Lewis Lapham is good, as well.

[paulk]

6. the Lewis Lapham article

gave me a sleepless night.

[Disturbed]

7. Iraq was a NeoFascist Wet Dream...

which has turned into a bloody nightmare.

[bemildred]

8. I received my new issue, so I went to look for it. nt

[teryang]

9. This article is a valuable reference point but....

...my critique is that it attributes too much causation to the Bremer blueprint and the utopian free market crap.

It is a well known principle of governance in Iraq, that commerce cannot exist where there is anarchy. This is the method that those who master and control the means of coercion, which leads to governance, use to obtain power in Baghdad. It has been this way for over a thousand years. While some bombings are CIA or Mossad inspired, most are resistance inspired. While they appear senseless, they serve the purpose of making commerce impossible until the right parties are back in power.

Bremer's stupid blueprint didn't raise the resistance, it met the resistance. That Bremer was so ignorant as to play right into its hand, is to be expected, the guy is a silver spooned half wit, with no credentials whatsoever.

Again, another reference point is that of our domestic political audience. The goal was to create a perennial security crisis, which a failed state satisfies completely. Thus Iraq was transformed into a "terrorist haven" like Lebanon, satisfying the "war on terror" criteria necessary to sell the police state and militarist agenda at home for the defense contractors, energy industry and corporate plunderers robbing the United States blind. What is going on in Iraq is a side show compared to this. Machiavelli's discourses are the guidebook for this boondoggle not Straussian faux utopianism.

If one wanted to create a free market utopia, you would have to do what was done in Taiwan. First comes the new electrical infrastructure, then the rail system, port facilities and roads. WE paid for all of it, a gift from the American people. Its still there providing the backbone of a viable society. Proctor and Gamble comes last. However, this method requires a real application of resources and a truly identifiable center of sovereign power. Our application is not there nor is there a sovereign power. Another example would be Korea in which the Japanese model of protectionism and exclusion of foreign competition enabled the aggregation of substantial capitalist wealth. What occurred in Iraq was little more than ill disguised looting by carpet baggers and profiteers.

In todays corrupt world in which security crises are created in windowless bunkers in Washington D.C., money appropriated for infrastructure construction is really only intended to go into the pockets of corporate supporters.

[glitch]

10. This is good - you should send it to Harpers. nt

[bemildred]

11. Your arguments are cogent, your criticisms correct.

Machiavelli was a much smarter guy than Strauss.

As I said above, I like Ms Klein's piece because it explains
some bizarre and otherwise unfathomable features of Bremer's
rule, and gives a reading on who all these suddenly prominent
incompetents are and why they were shoved out on the stage from
positions of former obscurity, like Karzai in Afghanistan.

The motives of different players may be taken to be different.
The show does not have to just be about what one or a few think
it is about.

What is fascinating is the allegation that some of these buffoons
apparently did think this would work, allegations I find
perfectly credible when I contemplate the persons involved.
It is striking, as the fellow says above, that many of them
apparently do believe their own bullshit, which is not incompatible
with also grabbing the loot as fast as they can, and they did so
to the point of walking right into this mess without an apparent
second thought or any provision for the unexpected.

[teryang]

13. I agree with your comments

Somebody has to play the fool by default. It's always a safe bet to articulate everything on the basis of laissez faire/free market ideology as Bremer and his inexperienced and opportunistic flunkies did. This is the only permissable vocabulary. You can't call it conquest and colonialism.

It was always only a cover for a plan to conquer a nation not rebuild one. This is where the alleged naivete of theological school operatives comes in. Any "rebuilt" and "sovereign" nation to re-emerge in Iraq will be antithetical to this group's leadership goals. Colonialism has nothing to do with free markets or sovereignty. Some professional like Garner with a substantive plan to restore order isn't ever going to last in this situation, he might actually succeed in some respect, reconstituting indigenous power and eliminating opportunites for exploitation of a prostrate victim.

Klein's piece is excellent. There is a lot of detailed factual information and analysis there that I hadn't seen before. Thanks again.

[bemildred]

14. Surely, a pleasure. nt

[grasswire]

12. Indeed...

....because chaos=profit for the Bush cabal, and more chaos=more profit.

That's the difference between previous American reconstructions around the world and Iraq. Dwight D. Eisenhower's pappy didn't profit from weapons trading, broken civilizations and mess halls.

[Maple]

15. Iraq as 'Galt's Gulch' from Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'

Think of it.

They have used an entire country...and people...for an experiment.

[Pluvious]

16. Wow, that was quite a read...

Explains much of the mystery of what, why, and who is initiating all the violence.

What a frelling mess.

_______________
"I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, We do it this way, so should you."
-George W. Bush, presidential candidate, Oct. 11, 2000