Perhaps
Junior should have listened to dad.. Well spotted by Iraq
Body Count for this pertinent quote from TIME
Magazine March 2, 1998: |
Echoes
of the past“Our armies do not come in your cities and lands as conquerors
or enemies, but as liberators… I am commanded to invite you
to participate in the management of your own civil affairs.”
|
Towards a corporate state
Moreover, a recent report from Baghdad University shows unemployment
has now hit a crippling 70%. Sure, any war torn country will suffer
high unemployment levels, but it is the Republican led thrust towards
privatisation that has caused the greatest damage. In Iraq, the White
House has achieved what it can only dream of in the US. The economy
and its constituent utilities have been privatised, tariffs removed
and a very low top tier individual and corporate tax of 15% instituted.
This huge shift has left hundreds of thousands, who for generations
worked for the state, jobless. Local industries have also been hit
hard by the influx of cheap foreign consumer goods. Iraq’s economy
will not reach even half the size it was in the 1970s in the coming
10-15 years, the respected US-based Institute of International Finance
has reported. In the late 1970s, the country’s GDP per head hit
$7,000 It has since slid to $1,000 and is unlikely to surpass $3,500
in the next 15 years. Iraq’s debts of around $140bn are 400%
of GDP.
With sovereignty ‘handed over’ on June 28, there is no sign of a reduction in the 130,000 US troops, even if other nations, like the Philippines, Poland, Haiti and the Dominican Republic all pull their soldiers from the chaotic, war torn nation.
Bremer put in a place a number of regulations to ensure that the ‘Coalition’ remains in charge of economy, media and military affairs. He also ensured that all soldiers and contractors will continue to remain above the law. A number of watchdogs and advisers remain in all ministries with the power of veto. The ‘hand over of sovereignty’ was just another lie for Iraqis to stomach.
Comparisons with other imperial conquests
Ominously, the first US viceroy in Iraq, Jay Garner, compares America’s imperial conquest in the Middle East to a similar one 100 years earlier.
Noting how establishing US naval bases in the Philippines in the early 1900s allowed the US to maintain a “great presence in the Pacific” Garner said: “To me that’s what Iraq is for the next few decades. We ought to have something there … that gives us great presence in the Middle East. I think that’s going to be necessary.”
Despite having just 3% of the world’s population, the US manages to use up 25% of its energy. With oil reserves falling and emerging nations such as China and India needing greater stocks, the US has had to seek a solid source of oil through military means. Hence why, to the ire of all in the Middle East, the Americans are investing huge sums of money in 14 permanent military bases in the country.
Just as Vietnam was the US’ version of Afghanistan for the USSR, Iraq is taking on nasty similarities to oppressed Chechnya, another Russian quagmire conveniently heaped into the all consuming War on Terror™. Robert Fisk notes that the current craze for beheading, which he dubs terror by video, was sparked by a video available in bazaars around Iraq depicting Chechens decapitating a Russian soldier. The US must not be allowed to turn Iraq into Chechnya. The world does not need any more Groznys. It is time to pull out before the whole region unites against the occupying ‘liberators’.
