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Mon 23 Jun, 2003 09:48 pm
This appeared in the New York Times, Monday, 23 June 2003. It sounds very different from what was first announced. Just a short while ago the administration was talking about freeing Iraq from its terrible leader, and helping Iraqis build a better Iraq. In the following article, I find no mention of the Americans (Bremer) working with Iraqis at all. Nothing about what the Iraqis think, what they want, how they would like to see their country's direction. Did we, after all, simply want a foothold in the mid-east, and Iraq was the easiest way to get there? Was this really the goal?
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
HUMEH, Jordan, June 22 — L. Paul Bremer III, the chief United States administrator in Iraq, vowed today to dismantle that country's state-run economy by selling off government-owned companies and writing new laws to encourage foreign investment.
Recognizing that a rapid shift would cause pain to many in the short term, Mr. Bremer also raised the possibilities of distributing part of Iraq's oil revenues as "dividends" to citizens or creating a national trust fund that would help finance a "social safety net."
"Every individual Iraqi would come to understand his or her stake in the country's economic success," he told business and political leaders gathered here for a meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Taken together, Mr. Bremer's comments amounted to a blueprint for turning Iraq into a Middle East model of free trade and deregulation.
He made it clear that he wanted to start privatizing more than 40 government-owned companies that make products ranging from packaged foods to steel. Many of those companies, he acknowledged, would not be able to survive in the face of real competition.
"A fundamental component of this process will be to force state-owned enterprises to face hard budget constraints by reducing subsidies and special deals," he said. "Iraq will no doubt find that opening its borders to trade and investment will increase competitive pressure on its domestic firms and thereby raise productivity."
Senior officials in the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which Mr. Bremer heads, have said they hope to agree on a plan in the next few weeks to sell state-owned companies to private investors. But they are vague about how quickly the process should proceed, acknowledging that new owners would almost certainly slash the work forces at many companies and that some companies would not survive.
Many foreign investors, especially in neighboring Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey, said they were eager to enter the Iraqi market. But they also said the situation was too unstable and the laws too undefined to make any commitments yet.
A senior allied official here said today that work had already begun on drafting a modern commercial legal code that would protect investors and property rights. But he also acknowledged that the work was in its early stages.
The problem confronting allied officials is that the mood of Iraqis is turning more sour by the day, as basic services like electricity remain erratic and joblessness mounts.
mama<
About all America and its allies have done in Iraq is to bomb it back into the Stone Age. The war is not yet over regardless of what Dubya and other politcians may like to proclaim.
We have torn up an entire civilization and left it in ruins. Those who have survived Operation Iraqi Freedom certainly must be suffering from their losses and from mental health ailments like post-traumatic stress disorder.
Yes, we might have overturned the Hussein regime, but is the one we have installed any better? Why do we assume that people around the world should think like those of us in the United States? We are the most ethnocentric nation in the world, at the moment, and probably its most hated.
Ah, but take a look at the plan for Iraq. Quite the little Amercan business enterprise. Hasn't it occurred to this administration that not everybody wants this Americanization? That other countries, other customs, other peoples may have ideas of their own. This is one of the things that makes us so well loved. France did not care for Mconalds or Disney world; Jerry Seinfeld had to change his language and his outlook to perform in England - and yet we persist in trying to make the world as we see it.
Well, the Romans did eave us good roads.
Isn't all this Americanization exactly what Al-Queda and various suicide-bombers are fighting against? If we're to do that, I would think we must Americanize the world very fast, very soon, or face more organized backlash and stronger resistance.
Sounds harsh and cynical, but ethnic and cultural cleansing of the world is greatly underway.
It's such a shame, because the cultural identity and unique backgrounds that people have -- are actually their finest and most valuable possession. It is their unique advantage and contribution to the world.
If everyone becomes "American", fewer people will have unique strengths with which to add value in the world market.
I don't think you have much to worry about Code, even if some of the Neo-cons want an Americanized WalMart/Coca-Cola culture, it's not likely to happen so very quickly.
Al-Quaeda means "the base," and refers to the operation the wealthy, religiously eccentric Saudi of Yemeni descent, Osama bin Laden, set up with CIA funding during the Russian war in Afghanistan. bin Laden is wahabi, meaning an ultra-orthodox sect of Sunni Islam. The Wahabs were a clan reknowned for their "religious purity" and exploited by the ibn Saud clan for legitimacy in proclaiming their authority over the Arabian penninsula. The holy sites of Mecca and Medina must be protected by anyone claiming legitimacy in ruling Arabia. T. E. Lawrence understood this, and his first step to undermine the authority of the Turks was a series of attacks on railways. When the Turks could no longer assure safe travel to the holy places, they lost the support of other Muslims. The ibn Saud clan assured their ascendency by a double-whammy, the claimed to guard the purity of the holy places (no infidels allowed) and to bring about a rebirth of "pure" Islam through their exploitation of the image of sanctity conferred by their promotion of the Wahab. This has blown up in their faces, however, with the stationing of American troops in the Kingdom during Gulf War I. Removing those troops ought to have occurred a long time ago. bin Laden is able to play to the devout Muslim crowd because infidels are in the Kingdom, and potentially represent a defilement of the holy places. To the wahabi, their simple presence in the kingdom represents defilement. But with those troops gone, and the terrorist attacks within Saudi Arabia, the support for bin Laden has been undermined. We will now be facing a hard-core of religious fanaticsim which seeks to carry the war for religious purity to a depraved and infidel west. Having invaded Iraq, however, we have assured that the steps taken to remove the greivance about infidel troops in Saudi Arabia will be more than overbalanced by the continued image of the west as crusaders come to destroy Islamic nations. It is a very complex situation, which it appears to me, the current administration does not well understand. That's not a political problem for Bush and company, as the American people understand even less about the Muslim world.
If you haven't already, please read Paul Krugman's column in
The New York Times edition of Tuesday, June 24:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/6/24/opinion/24KRUG.html
Setanta - the American people apparently neither know nor care about very much. But our media has been more tightly controlled than realized, and that is where most get their information.
The Americanization of the world is not so desireable, because there are not only the wahabis, but many other groups, as yet unnamed, who would be against this on many principles. And I doubt that Europe would accept all our customs so willingly. And the way of human nature would not stay with one group for long. There would always be rebellion. If it worked, the Iberian Peninsula and a lot of Europe would be Islamic countries now. And England would have stayed Roman Catholic.
What bothers me, I guess, is the total disregard this administration has for anyone but themselves and their ambitions. They are like the Mongol hordes, sweeping across on their horses, destroying all in their way. Ignorant, unknowing and uncaring. And yet, the Europeans did not end up looking like the Mongols, nor were the Mongol ways adopted.
History teaches. But then again, back in those days there weren't all the Limbaughs, Russerts and such to disseminate the news. I know that in the end this will all amount to very little, but in the meantime..
Krugman is going from being a wry commentator to a worried one.
This entire enterprise was fiasco when it started.
It is fiasco now.
It will be fiasco well into the future.
Good points, Set and Mama. Overall, I just think the best thing *for America* is to enhance cultural diversity throughout the world.
Like an ecosystem that depends on a monoculture, if we go too far with business practices and identical democracies, the world will be weaker for it.
That link broken. This link works.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/opinion/24KRUG.html
If they move the article again, just use their search tool to find everything with "Paul Krugman".
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