Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Pursuit of a Neocon Utopia

[carolinayellowdog]

by Naomi Klein appears in the September Harper's. It's a devastating indictment of US occupation of Iraq and Bremer in particular. Great reporting, great writing. Here is an excerpt:

The great historical irony unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible...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 fo 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.

[Jim__]

1. Excellent article!

It's clear from this article that the bush administration is setting up Iraq to be looted by corporate America.

[bemildred]

2. God! I wanted to post that piece so bad.

If you want to understand all the wierd stuff that
has gone on over there and who the perps are and what
they are up to, it is a beautiful piece.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. I second the endorsement, and hereby kick it back to the top

It's more than "not having a plan," it's more than "a war for oil."

They're acting like the Nazis and Stalinists did in their conquered parts of Europe and the Japanese did in their conquered parts of Asia.

That same issue contains an article about the Republican propaganda machine by the wonderful Lewis Lapham. In it he notes, after listing the many self-contradictory positions that the neocons hold (e.g. the life of a fetus is sacred, but not the life of an Iraqi civilian):
"In the glut of paper, I could find no unifying or fundamental principel except a certain belief that money was good for rich people and bad for poor people...No matter where the words were coming from...the authors invariably found the same abiding lesson in the tale--money enobles rich people, making them strong as well as wise; money corrupts poor people, making them stupid as well as weak."

You nailed it, Lewis! :thumbsup:

[TahitiNut]

5. I adore Lewis Lapham and that essay is wonderful!

He surgically dissects the redolent hypocrisies of the right and show these people for the mental midgets they are. I've been waiting for the website to reflect the September issue before posting a link. I hope that particular essay gets posted in full.

[Barrett808]

4. Will this get posted online? n/t