Page 3 of 3 SPEAKING
FREELY Riches keep the US in
Iraq By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
founding president of the Committee for
the Liberation of Iraq. Now he's helping former
Soviet bloc states win business there.
Margaret Bartel, who managed federal money
channeled to [Iraqi exile Ahmad] Chalabi's exile
group, the Iraqi National Congress, including
funds for its prewar intelligence program on
Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. She
now heads a Washington-area consulting firm
helping would-be investors find
Iraqi
partners.
K Riva Levinson, a Washington lobbyist and
public relations specialist who received federal
funds to drum up prewar support for the Iraqi
National Congress. She has close ties to Bartel
and now helps companies open doors in Iraq, in
part through her contacts with the Iraqi National
Congress.
Joe M Allbaugh, who
managed Bush's 2000 campaign for the White House
and later headed the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, and Edward Rogers Jr, an aide
to the first president [George H W] Bush,
recently helped set up New Bridge Strategies and
Diligence, LLC to promote business in postwar
Iraq. [10]
There are strong
indications that these dubious relationships
represent more than simple cases of sporadic or
unrelated instances of some unscrupulous or rogue
elements. Evidence shows that contracts for the
"reconstruction" of Iraq were drawn long before
the invasion and deconstruction of that country
had started. In a fascinating report for The
Nation magazine titled "The rise of disaster
capitalism", Naomi Klein describes such
long-projected "rebuilding" schemes as follows:
Last summer, in the lull of the
August media doze, the Bush administration's
doctrine of preventive war took a major leap
forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House
created the Office of the Coordinator for
Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by
former US ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual.
Its mandate is to draw up elaborate
"post-conflict" plans for up to 25 countries
that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According
to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate
three full-scale reconstruction operations in
different countries "at the same time", each
lasting "five to seven years". [11]
Here we get a glimpse of the real
reasons or forces behind the Bush administration's
preemptive wars. As Klein puts it, "A government
devoted to perpetual preemptive deconstruction now
has a standing office of perpetual preemptive
reconstruction." Klein also documents how (through
Pascual's office) contractors drew
"reconstruction" plans in close collaboration with
various government agencies and how, at times,
contracts were actually pre-approved and paper
work completed long before an actual military
strike:
In close cooperation with the
National Intelligence Council, Pascual's office
keeps "high risk" countries on a "watch list"
and assembles rapid-response teams ready to
engage in prewar planning and to "mobilize and
deploy quickly" after a conflict has gone down.
The teams are made up of private companies,
non-governmental organizations and members of
think-tanks - some, Pascual told an audience at
the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in October, will have "pre-completed"
contracts to rebuild countries that are not yet
broken. Doing this paperwork in advance could
"cut off three to six months in your response
time".
No business model or
entrepreneurial paradigm can adequately capture
the nature of this kind of scheming and
profiteering. Not even illicit businesses based on
rent-seeking, corruption or theft can sufficiently
describe the kind of nefarious business interests
that lurk behind the Bush administration's
preemptive wars.
Only a calculated
imperial or colonial kind of exploitation, albeit
a new form of colonialism or imperialism, can
capture the essence of the war profiteering
associated with the recent US wars of aggression.
As Shalmali Guttal, a Bangalore-based researcher,
put it, "We used to have vulgar colonialism. Now
we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call
it 'reconstruction'." [12]
Classical
colonial or imperial powers roamed on the
periphery of the capitalist center, "discovered"
new territories and drained them of their riches
and resources. Today, there are no new places on
our planet to be "discovered". But there are many
vulnerable sovereign countries whose governments
can be overthrown, their infrastructures smashed
to the ground, and fortunes made as a result (of
both destruction and "reconstruction"). And herein
lies the genius of a parasitically efficient
market mechanism, as well as a major driving force
behind the Bush administration's unprovoked
unilateral wars of choice.
But not only
does the new form of imperial or colonial
aggression, driven largely by the powerful
interests that are vested in the armaments
industries and other war-based businesses, bring
calamity to the vanquished, it is also detrimental
and burdensome to the victor, namely the imperium
and its citizens.
Contrary to the external
military operations of past empires, which usually
brought benefits not only to the imperial ruling
classes but also (through "trickle-down" effects
to their citizens), US military expeditions and
operations of late are not justifiable even on the
grounds of national economic gains.
Indeed, escalating US military expansions
and aggressions have become ever more wasteful and
cost-inefficient as they are hollowing out the
public treasury, undermining social spending and
accumulating national debt. Viewed in this light,
the new form of imperialism can perhaps be called
"parasitic" imperialism.
War profiteering
is, of course, not new; it has always existed in
the course of the history of warfare. What makes
war profiteering in the context of the recent US
wars of choice unique and extremely dangerous to
world peace and stability, however, is that it has
become a major driving force behind war and
militarism.
This is key to an
understanding of why the US ruling elite is
reluctant to pull US troops out of Iraq. The
reluctance or "difficulty" of leaving Iraq stems
not so much from pulling 140,000 troops out of
that country as it is from pulling out more than
100,000 contractors. As Josh Mitteldorf of the
University of Arizona recently put it, "There are
a lot of contractors making a fortune, and we
don't want that money tap turned off, even though
it is borrowed money, which our children and
grandchildren will have to repay." [13]
It
follows that US troops will not be withdrawn from
Iraq as long as anti-war voices are not raised
beyond the premises and parameters of the official
narrative or justification of the war: terrorism,
democracy, civil war, stability, human rights, and
the like. Anti-war forces need to extricate
themselves from the largely diversionary and
constraining debate over these secondary issues,
and raise public consciousness of the scandalous
economic interests that drive the war.
It
is crucially important that public attention is
shifted away from the confining official narrative
of the war, parroted by the corporate media and
political pundits, to the economic crimes that
have been committed because of this war, both in
Iraq and in the United States.
It is time
to make a moral case for restoring Iraqi oil and
other assets to the Iraqis. It is also time to
make a moral case against the war profiteers'
plundering of the US Treasury, or tax dollars. To
paraphrase the late General Smedley D Butler, most
wars could easily be ended - they might not even
be started - if profits are taken out of them.
[14]
Notes [1] Renae
Merle, "Census counts 100,000 contractors in
Iraq", Washington Post (December 5, 2006). [2]
The Center for Public Integrity, "Report finds
$362 billion in no-bid contracts at the Pentagon"
(September 29, 2004). [3] Bill Rigby, "Defense
stocks may jump higher with big profits", Reuters
(April 12, 2006). [4] The Center for Public
Integrity, "Outsourcing the Pentagon" (September
29, 2004). [5] Esther Schrader, "Companies
capitalize on war on terror", Los Angeles Times
(April 14, 2002). [6] Steve Young, "What is bad
for America is good for Halliburton ... just ask
the vice president", OpEdNews.com (October 23
2006). [7] "War profiteering", by Source Watch
(a project of the Center for Media and Democracy).
[8] Renae Merle, op cit. [9] William D
Hartung, How Much Are You Making on the War,
Daddy? (New York: Nation Books, 2003);
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004); Ismael
Hossein-zadeh, The Political Economy of US
Militarism (New York & London:
Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006). [10] "War
profiteering". [11] Naomi Klein, "The rise of
disaster capitalism", The Nation (May 2, 2005).
[12] As quoted in Klein, ibid. [13] Josh
Mitteldorf, "Why we're not getting out of Iraq",
Op Ed News (December 8, 2006). [14] Smedley D
Butler, War Is a Racket (Los Angeles: Feral
House, 1935 [2003]).
Ismael
Hossein-zadeh is a professor of economics at
Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is the
author of the newly published bookThe Political
Economy of US Militarism. His
webpage is www.cbpa.drake.edu/hossein-zadeh.
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