| Fixer Upper |
29 September 2003
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Iraq for Sale
Those who said that the war against the Saddamite regime in Iraq was really all about oil had it wrong. The Iraqi government will keep its oil industry according to a Pentagon statement last week. Instead, the American conquerors and their auxiliaries will simply sell off the rest of the country to pay for the cost of reconstruction.
From an economic standpoint, the privatization of Iraq makes some sense, and the fact that foreigners will be the chief beneficiaries of this mass sell-off merely reflects the fact that Iraqis haven't any money. Mrs. Thatcher created a new Britain out of a similar situation in the 1980s, and destroyed countless ives in the process. After the suffering of the last 30 years or so, and three failed wars, the last thing the Iraqis need is to be treated like a mining town north of Watford Gap.
The mass sale will also be bad for almost all the western companies that buy up Iraq. The opportunities are huge, to be sure, in simply paving all the roads and filling in the potholes (bomb craters) in the highway. But this is a country that hasn't even got a constitution yet, let alone laws on property and an effective court system to enforce contracts. While Mr. Bush and his administration has said that Iraqis are not yet ready for self-government (which is true), they have not yet said that Iraqis are not yet ready for international capitalism (equally true).
One needs only look at the oligarchs of Russia to see Iraq's business future. The only real difference will be the very large number of Texans who get paid commissions for selling the parts needed to make Iraq work. And that will be the real defeat of America in the public relations battle. A war appears to have been fought, not for Iraqi freedom, nor for western security, nor for regional stability. It appears that it was fought to give companies from Dallas and Houston a new theatre for their operations.
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