Harper's: Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia

[madfloridian]

Lengthy, but some of the paragraphs jump out at you.

http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html

SNIP...."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.

The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based....." END SNIP

[jean]

1. Naomi Klein's article is excellent - if you can catch the replay of her

interview on the Al Franken Show - do so. She is verbally adept and her tales from Iraq are eye opening.

[htuttle]

2. Hopefully, future historians will have access to Naomi Klein's work

Especially about Iraq. Her stories have been consistently enlightening and strike at some of the under-examined forces in this 'Mess-o-potamia'.

The invasion of Iraq will someday be seen as one of the biggest strongarm robbery attempts in the modern age. Certainly one of the most egregious.

[madfloridian]

3. More, Joe Allbaugh involved again.

SNIP..."The Economist described Iraq under Bremer as “a capitalist dream,” and a flurry of new consulting firms were launched promising to help companies get access to the Iraqi market, their boards of directors stacked with well-connected Republicans. The most prominent was New Bridge Strategies, started by Joe Allbaugh, former Bush-Cheney campaign manager “Getting the rights to distribute Procter & Gamble products can be a gold mine,” one of the company’s partners enthused. “One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out thirty Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country.”

[Malva Zebrina]

4. I am so glad you posted this

It is one of the most comprehensive analysis and reporting on the situation in Iraq. It is full of facts that are not generally known.

[dumpster_baby]

5. this is a great article

read it all--it also tells us a lot about the world and especially America. They are trying to do to Iraq what they are trying to do to America.

[madfloridian]

6. Yes, they are. That was my first thought. Bottom line: profit.

:hi:

[Warpy]

7. Yeah, and the first thing these ideologically driven shitheads

had to do was reinstitute national healthcare. They're trying to undersupply the hospitals, though, to make it as unattractive as possible, the same thing rich men who can opt out of any socialist system do to it.

What this neocon wetdream of a laboratory in Iraq will show once and for all is that it's a cruel and unworkable economic idea, one that leads inexorably to feudalism for the many and enormous riches for a very few.

Don't expect these wankers to be convinced their theories are wrong, though. When the inevitable revolution kicks their wrinkled asses out of that country, they'll blame that on not allowing their wonderful dogma to be tried long enough.

They never change.

[madfloridian]

8. "Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban"

SNIP...."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."

This article has made me so angry! I want to not believe it is true...but inside I know it is.