"Baghdad Year Zero....Pillaging Iraq in Pursuit of NeoCon Utopia"

[KoKo]

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.

* * *

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.

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. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.

More...and it's worth the read and re-read for those of us who read it the first time at......
http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

[Warpy]

1. That's part of the story that's been undertold

They are trying to set up a libertarian's paradise, a privatization and supply sider Utopian economy there, with few things provided or overseen by government and everything in corporate hands, allowing the magic of the holy marketplace to regulate everything.

I'm afraid that will cause the longest lasting damage to that country. You can bury the dead, cart off the rubble and rebuild the infrastructure. However, restoring the economy to a rational basis will take far longer as economic thugs refuse to relinquish everything the US stole for them once they become rich and powerful enough to either challenge or buy the government.

These people are locusts, stripping everything bare with no regard to everyone else who is trying to survive.

[KoKo]

4. What's that old song lyric? "Pave Paradise and put up a Parking Lot."

They were very ambitious. WalMarts everywhere... Remake a country in their own image since they started to be so successful here in the US during Reagan and Poppy.

[Ian_rd]

2. This is always worth a repost for anyone who hasn't read it.

This remains one of the very few pieces of journalism that touches on the actual reasons of why we went to war in the first place. Pretty much everyone knows by now that the White House lied in order to start the war, but still not too many people know their motives. This article explains that it's so much more than geopolitical strategy to control Iraq's energy resources.

I've recommended this article many times to many people.

[givemebackmycountry]

3. Excellent post...

Nominated and K/R!

[happyslug]

5. This report is over Two years old

I read it (or something like it) in 2004 when it came out. From what I remember about the article I read, the article mentioned how Shock Therapy had NOT worked in Chile and Pinochet finally had to get rid of them. The Failure iN Chile and the Former USSR was blamed on less than complete shock Therapy, and that Iraq was going to be the perfect example of how Shock Therapy would work. Of course when the policy failed, the failure was blamed on everything EXCEPT that the policy being bad. Palast wrote a similar Article but the article I remember reading about was more specific about Chile AND Iraq.

The Palast Article I wrote about:
http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2/#more-1551

[KoKo]

6. That's the Point....it's over two years old...yet it's still applicable!

Thanks for your links to additional info...because the MORE INFO we GET OUT...the BETTER IT IS IN BRINGING DOWN the BFEE!