Thursday, August 26th, 2004

Jane and Naomi on Iraq

Josh Clover’s great post on dancing and fighting in Iraq reminded me to big up Naomi Klein’s piece in Harper’s this month. (Not online, because Harpers is so old school their website has the cover from two months ago as their current issue.)

Klein argues that the line that Bush and the neocons went into Iraq without a plan is patently WRONG. They went in to Iraq to turn it into a neocon free-market wet dream: no trade or capital restrictions, no unions, no wages, no jobs, no nothing. Basically opening the place up for Halliburton-Bechtel-Walmart-McDonald’s-Starbucks to plunder. A Baghdad Year Zero with Bush’s man Paul Bremer on the reset button.

Klein describes how Bremer attempted to do through the CPA everything the IMF would like to do in every other country, but can’t, because of those funny ideas commonly known in international circles as self-determination and self-governance.

She then traces–in her usual brilliant way–how the invisible hand turns into a Fallujah-to-Najaf pimp-slap, encouraging the armed resistance that now, in very real terms, threatens the neocons in military, political and even ideological terms.

It’s fucking definitive. If you need to read one article explaining everything about Iraq, this is the one.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 8:48 am | 0 Comments

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