Iraq: An Indictment Of The Neocon Dream

[JinnRikki]

Baghdad Year Zero

Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia

Posted on Friday, September 24, 2004. Originally from Harper's Magazine, September 2004. By Naomi Klein.

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. SUNBULAH: 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.

I urge you to read the rest of this article regardless of political persuasion.
http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

 

[xpanda]

I remember that article (I'm a subscriber) and Klein gets a few points really wrong. The thrust of her thesis is that Iraq is a capitalist's utopia, a rape-and-pillage if you will. First, there is little that is actually capitalist about this endeavour (she and others like her do not distinguish between capitalism and corporatism) ... the gov't giving contracts with no bidding isn't exactly the result of free markets. Second, she mentions that the Neocons just love Milton Friedman. Having just finished a book of his, I can pretty much guarantee that Friedman is the kind of pro-liberal, pro-individualism, pro-liberty type that makes the Neocons dream of swastikas. If she'd read anything by [insert name of Neocon here] she would know this. (Irving Kristol specifically cites Friedman in his book Neoconservatism: the Autobiography of an Idea and the reference isn't one of agreement.

If the situation in Iraq were truly capitalist, there would be alot more Iraqis employed right now. With an unemployment rate of around 80%, and American workers being paid twice what they make here, who would you as a contractor hire??

Yes, the US gov't set Iraq up to be raped by friends of the administration. There is little doubt about that. But as someone who writes about consumerism for a living, I would expect Klein to know the difference between a capitalist and a corporatist, and I would certainly have expected her to have read some Milton Friedman by now.

 

[JinnRikki]

Well, sorry then. I guess were doing a bang up job in Iraq and every things rosey. I don't know who this biatch Klien is but how dare she pick on our Iraq policy.
Anyone who can't tell the difference between capitalism and corporatism has no business writing articles on conditions in Iraq. Just because he or she has been there is irrelevant.
I guess some of us need to expand our reading list.

 

[xpanda]

Well, sorry then. I guess were doing a bang up job in Iraq and every things rosey. I don't know who this biatch Klien is but how dare she pick on our Iraq policy.
Anyone who can't tell the difference between capitalism and corporatism has no business writing articles on conditions in Iraq. Just because he or she has been there is irrelevant.
I guess some of us need to expand our reading list.

No need to get feisty about my reply. The point I'm making is that Klein has dedicated her writing career to bashing every single form of money making out there -- her anti-Iraq war stance is based largely on the funds being misappropriated, not on the immorality of killing people under false pretenses, which is a far greater reason to oppose the war, IMO. (Pillaging Iraq's oil supply and other corporate opportunities were not the main reasons for the war. These are simply side benefits for a select few. Now, if she chose instead to focus on the military industrial complex, that would be more applicable.)

Consider also that people who take vocal anti-war stances, and tout false information in the process, only serve to undermine legitimate anti-war arguments. Michael Moore, for example, hurt the cause more than he helped. Klein's not as vocal, obviously, but she needs to get things straight if she wants to be helpful.

 

[JinnRikki]

The point I'm making is that Klein has dedicated her writing career to bashing every single form of money making out there

OK you have read her stuff more than I have and don't care for her.

--

her anti-Iraq war stance is based largely on the funds being misappropriated, not on the immorality of killing people under false pretenses, which is a far greater reason to oppose the war, IMO.

No argument, but the killing thing is being covered by others. Because she doesn't say she's against the killing make her piece less viable?

(Pillaging Iraq's oil supply and other corporate opportunities were not the main reasons for the war. These are simply side benefits for a select few.

I don't entirely agree with that. I think they were at least co-reasons.
Corporate opportunities (more like thievery).

Consider also that people who take vocal anti-war stances, and tout false information in the process, only serve to undermine legitimate anti-war arguments. Michael Moore, for example, hurt the cause more than he helped. Klein's not as vocal, obviously, but she needs to get things straight if she wants to be helpful.

Other than her inability to distinguish between capitalism and corporatism and she doesn't know jack about Friedman what in her article is false?
I don't think Moore hurt the cause at all. Considering the formidable attack
campaign that is still being waged against him he must have done something
right. What false info in 9/11 are you referring to?
When bush decides Canadas economy needs a little tweaking will you stand in front of the tank screaming "go home yankee corporatists"?

 

[xpanda]

OK you have read her stuff more than I have and don't care for her.

She's Canadian, too, so we hear from her often. This could be adding to my disdain for her.

Other than her inability to distinguish between capitalism and corporatism and she doesn't know jack about Friedman what in her article is false?

It's not just not knowing about Friedman. Here:

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.

Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions.

This is her thesis.

In the first place, neoconservatism and laissez-faire economics are mutually exclusive. Thus, her theory that Postwar planning in Iraq revolved around engineering a neoconservative utopia of totally free markets is false. Second, there's nothing laissez-faire about governments engineering market opportunities for select corporations, as was entirely the case. Third, I recall Phaedrus once posting an article in here claiming that Iraqis would be facing a flat tax of 15%, but had never paid taxes before this. But Klein is giving the impression that the Bush admin is reducing taxes in Iraq for corporations, when in fact none previously existed (how could they, when nearly everything was state-owned.)

I completely agree that the raping and pillaging that is happening in Iraq is positively shameful. It's a disgrace that the best job an Iraqi can get is in the police force or army, where they may have to kill a fellow citizen, or take an enormous risk and get killed by an insurgent. It's pathetic. But surely if Klein is going to write an article on this very specific subject, she should know what both neoconservatism and laissez-faire economics are, given that her thesis revolves around them?? Why could Klein not simply have limited her article to how the US worked around the Geneva Conventions? That in itself is scathing enough. But Klein has a pro-socialist, anti-capitalist agenda, and twists definitions and realities to suit her arguments. Her agenda has nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with promoting socialism.

She's an alarmist, disingenuous, extreme leftist, that is all. The problem with alarmist writers/pundits (regardless of their political stance) is that they make the movement look foolish. If you can prove a couple of points in Coulter's argument to be wrong, you can dismiss her entire book and then her entire career, then easily her entire movement, too. It's not a big leap. I've never read a book of hers, but anyone who titles a book Liberals: How To Talk To Them If You Must cannot be worth my time.

I don't think Moore hurt the cause at all. Considering the formidable attack campaign that is still being waged against him he must have done something right. What false info in 9/11 are you referring to?

Nothing really 'false' in Moore's film, but obviously very narrow in scope. Frankly, I was mostly disappointed that he talked about such fluffy things as Bush's vacations, and that he failed to mention that nearly every admin since WWII has been in the Saudi's pockets. It's that he used more hyperbole and metaphors than he did intelligently presented arguments. Hijacking Catastrophe is the film Moore should have made. (www.hijackingcatastrophe.org) I highly recommend it.

So given the huge mistakes Bush and co. have made, it shouldn't be so hard to find factual, non-exaggerated pies to throw in his face.

When bush decides Canadas economy needs a little tweaking will you stand in front of the tank screaming "go home yankee corporatists"?

I'm not sure what you're asking -- would I protest if the US tried to take us over to exploit our markets? Protest, no -- I'd enlist.

Sorry that was so winded. She just bugs me.

 

[JinnRikki]

Fair enough, as I said I'm not familiar with Klein, and my knowledge of economics is limited to balancing the check book and maintaining a budget.
I found some of what she wrote compelling, the Bremer Barricades and the machinations prior to transfer of power in particular. I had never heard these things and I doubt most of the people in the U.S. had.
That last bit about Canadas economy didn't mean anything. I'm just tired of hearing about Iraq and who we'll invade next. Oh for the days when a stained blue dress was all we had to worry about.