The Shock Doctrine: The Anti-Marshall Plan page 346

[Joanne98]

Bremer's laws, designed to creat the conditions for an investor frenzy, were not exactly original-they were merely an accelerated version of what had been implemented in previous shock therapy experiments. But Bush's diaster capitalism cabinet was not content to wait for new laws to take effect. Where the Iraq experiment entered bold new terrain was that it transformed the invasion, occupation and reconstuction into an exciting, fully privatized new market.



When the initial billions were announced, there were, inevitably, laudatory comparisons with the Marshall Plan. Bush invited the parallels, declaring the reconstruction "the greatest financial commitment of it's kind since the Marshall Plan," and stating in a televised address in the early months of the occupation that "America has done this kind of work before. Following World War 2, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and germany, and stood with them as they built representative governments."



What happened to the billions earmarked for Iraq's recontruction, however, bore no relationship to the history Bush invoked..



The Bush cabinet had in fact launched an anti-Marshall Plan, it's mirror opposite in nearly every conceivable way. It was a plan guaranteed from the start to further undermine Iraq's badly weakened industrial sector and to send Iraqi unemployment soaring. Where the post Second World war plan had barred foreign firms from investing, to avoid the perception that they were taking advantage of countries that in a weakened state, this scheme did everything possible to entice corporate America (with a few bones tossed to the "Coalition of the willing'). It was this theft of Iraq's recontruction funds from Iraqis, justified by unquestioning, racist assumptions about U.S. superiority and Iraqi inferiority-and not merely the generic demons of "corruption" and "inefficiency"-that doomed the project from the start.



None of the money went to Iraqi factories so they could re-open and form the foundation of a sustainable economy, create local jobs and fund a social safety net. Iraqis had virtually no role in this plan at all. Instead, the U.S. federal government contracts, most of them issued by USAID, commissioned a kind of country-in-a-box, designed in Virginia and Texas, to be assembled in Iraq. It was, as the occupation authorities repeatedly said, "A gift from the people of the United states to the people of Iraq"-all the Iraqis had to do was unwrap it. Even Iraqis' low-wage labor wasn't required for the assembly process because the major US contractors such as halliburton, Bechtel and the California-based engineering giant Parsons preferred to import foreign workers whom they felt confident they could control. Once again Iraqis were cast in the role of awed spectators-first awed by US military technology and then by its engineering and management prowess.

As is now well known, nothing about Bush's anti-Marshall Plan went as intended. Iraqis did not see the corporate reconstruction as "a gift": most saw it as a modernized form of pillage, and US corporations didn't wow anyone with their speed and efficiency: instead they have managed to turn the word "reconstruction" as one Iraqi engineer put it, "a joke that nobody laughs at". Each miscalculation provided escalating levels of resistance, answered with counterrepression by foreign troops, ultimately sending the country spiraling into an inferno of violence. As of July 2006, according to the most credible study, the war in Iraq has taken the lives of 655,000 Iraqis who would not have died had there been no invasion or occupation.



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[Joanne98]

1. kick

[TheCentepedeShoes]

2. I have to get this book

It's been on my list (and there's a backup for copies from the library, which is a good thing). My book budget is busted but I'll find room. Thank you.
And Happy New Year. :toast:

[Joanne98]

3. Happy New year to you too TheCentepedeShoes...

[TheCentepedeShoes]

6. I saw Shock Doctrine

in the bookstore a couple or so weeks ago...in the business section. I suppose that may be an appropriate place, but next time I'm there, I think I'll do a little "rearranging" and stick a copy or two in the political/current events section. I did that with a book I found in the religion section (about religious right politics) and it's never been put back. Sadly, not purchased either.

[Joanne98]

4. kick

[EFerrari]

5. I can't tell if that's Baghdad or New Orleans.

:kick:

[leveymg]

7. K&R

[lovuian]

8. its starving torturing imprisoning and genocide

its the Milton Friedman way

[alfredo]

9. thanks for posting

[Joanne98]

10. kick