We own Iraq: The Shock Doctrine perfected

It’s time to add another star to the flag. We’re never leaving Iraq. Ever. The Sun will go red giant in about five billion years, and we’ll still be in Iraq.

TPM Muckraker:

So it begins. After years of obfuscation and denial on the length of the U.S.’s stay in Iraq, the White House and the Maliki government have released a joint declaration of “principles” for “friendship and cooperation.” Apparently President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the declaration during a morning teleconference.

As TPMM  points out, the agreement doesn’t explicitly discuss a military presence, and when it does refer to our protecting a “democratic Iraq”:

A “democratic Iraq” here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That’s something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government — with some justification — as a recipe for a future coup.

In other words, Iraq’s “government” will remain our puppet. Should they have the temerity to attempt to do anything of which we disapprove, we can simply threaten to withdraw our protection. Needless to say, this will not be popular with most Iraqis, but when have their opinions- or lives- mattered, anyway?

When MLDB diaried this, this morning, his linked article was a little different from the one I read. Here’s what I consider key, as reported by the Associated Press:

The two senior Iraqi officials said Iraqi authorities had discussed the broad outlines of the proposal with U.S. military and diplomatic representatives. The Americans appeared generally favorable subject to negotiations on the details, which include preferential treatment for American investments, according to the Iraqi officials involved in the discussions.

As I said in MLDB’s diary:

Let’s be clear: this is Naomi Klein’s disaster capitalism. Let’s be doubly clear: we, the taxpayers, will be paying for an exclusive security force whose sole mission will be the protection of the private corporations who will own and operate Iraq.

(more)

Starting with the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, in the 1970s, and moving right up through Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Klein sees a pattern of:

…using moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering.

It is not something that has been invented on the fly, rather:

I discovered that the idea of exploiting crisis and disaster has been the modus operandi of Milton Friedman’s movement from the very beginning–this fundamentalist form of capitalism has always needed disasters to advance. It was certainly the case that the facilitating disasters were getting bigger and more shocking, but what was happening in Iraq and New Orleans was not a new, post-September 11 invention. Rather, these bold experiments in crisis exploitation were the culmination of three decades of strict adherence to the shock doctrine.

More to the point:

The bottom line is that while Friedman’s economic model is capable of being partially imposed under democracy, authoritarian conditions are required for the implementation of its true vision.

For the bottom line is this:

A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business is not liberal, conservative, or capitalist but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor and an aggressive nationalism that justifies bottomless spending on security. For those inside the bubble of extreme wealth created by such an arrangement, there can be no more profitable way to organize a society. But because of the obvious drawbacks for the vast majority of the population left outside the bubble, other features of the corporatist state tend to include aggressive surveillance (once again, with government and large corporations trading favors and contracts), mass incarceration, shrinking civil liberties and often, though not always, torture.

Sound familiar? The the disaster Bush has wrought in Iraq is perfect; and TPM Muckraker also points out, Iraq “war czar” General Douglas Lute claims the establishment of permanent bases in Iraq does not even require Senate approval. That, of course, would involve democratic processes, and we know that democratic processes are a hindrance to the effective exploitation by corporatists. Meanwhile, the military is getting ever more inventive in its construction of military bases: a recent Wall Street Journal article even revealed that we’re now building them literally on top of Iraq oil platforms!

So, wake up tomorrow, go to work, and work hard. As earlier stated, a good chunk of the tax dollars you’re paying to our “government” will really be spent for our own military to provide personal protection to the corporatists to whom Iraq is now becoming a wholly owned subsidiary.

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    • documel on November 27, 2007 at 00:37

    The Iraqis would have perferred Blackwater for this job–it’s just that they killed too many Iraqis openly.

  1. here

    This book fingers neoliberalism so thoroughly that, after reading it, you’ll think of Milton Friedman and the rest of the neoliberals as a collection of sadistic mad scientists, experimenting on the world with an abandon which we would normally attribute to the villains of James Bond movies.


    The Shock Doctrine is a book written as journalistic expose, yet it goes further than most of its kind in presenting us with a full-fledged history of neoliberalism, from its ideological roots in the Mont Pelerin Society to the present moment.


    Now, there are plenty of books written about neoliberalism.  Dumenil and Levy’s Capital Resurgent, for instance, or David Harvey’s book (mentioned in Lenin’s Tomb), as well as (for those who know my work here) Harry Shutt’s The Trouble With Capitalism.  But this is one of the best, because it documents the “neoliberal experience” so thoroughly that it will be difficult to make promises of neoliberal paradise seem real afterward.

  2. my party asks me to line up and vote and work for the Democratic neoliberals. Unite they say to stop the neocons, the wingers, it is so surreal such a farce. Hillary has openly said she will do exactly what this story is about. So how do they reconcile this to the voters? Tne party loyals believe the spin that this is centerist and inevitable, and in our national interests. Where are our candidates and why do they think they can oppose the war/occupation and yet say it must continue? Both parties want the same base, the base of fools.    

    • Edger on November 27, 2007 at 02:00

    …this should resolve the question once and for all: We are on our own.

    Asked about her “greatest mistake,” Pelosi said Why don’t you tell me? ‘Cause I think we’re doing just great.” Remember when Georgie stumbled over a similar question and couldn’t recall any mistakes? It seems Our Only President is not the only one so afflicted.

    The hand-off…

    “Principles” for Permanent Iraqi Presence

    A “democratic Iraq” here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That’s something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government — with some justification — as a recipe for a future coup.



    In other words, we’re staying in Iraq to defend George Bush’s ass, and his puppet Nouri al-Maliki against all enemies, foreign and domestic. What will the presidential candidates say about this?

    “Principles”?

    For some reason I’m reminded here, in a very morbid and twisted sort of way, of two wingnut blondes walking down the street.

    One of them says to the other: “Awwww – look at the poor little dead birdie!!!”.

    The second wingnut blonde looks up and says “Where???”

  3. and that objective is to destroy what was America.

    Those proud traditions of the regular military as faster deconstructed by lowering the public perception of the military.  It is being replaced however by the far more sinister private army a la Blackwater.  They don’t have to answer to anybody.

    The delusionals are still pushing Islamofascism as the greatest threat to America, no the real threat is corpo-fascism.  Stop buying shit.  I don’t need to buy my daughter stuff instead I need her to know I’m here to help hold hot compresses on her horse’s injured shoulder.

    When China demands Iraq’s oil however ain’t none of us going to stop them.

  4. attributed to John Hay, McKinley’s UK ambassador, Lincoln’s faithful personal secretary, a Republican — may as well have dropped from Rumsfeld’s mouth in 2003. Hay of course referred to the Spanish American War, the Cuba episode which ended rather quickly as compared to the Philippine episode which filled out three of four years official hostilities in the Spanish colony, another four of Filippino “insurgent” combat, and another three decades of Filippino “guerilla” raids.

    1898-1899, 1899-1902, 1902-1906, 1906-1946: This period is the template of US “free market” imperialism which the ancient Friedman was born (1912-2006). Excuse me for momentarily assuming a historiorantish pose 😉 to finger the cultural paradigm of US “authoritarianism” prefigured by events prior to Cheney’s birth.

    You got yer uncanny casualty ratio, volunteer troops, atrocities [see Zinn] and veteran benchmarks 1: Over the first 3 years, 4,234 US dead and 2,818 US wounded; 20,000 Filipino regular and 200,000- 500,000 civillian dead

    Just three decades after the Civil War, the regular Army numbered 28,000 soldiers patrolling the West and pulling garrison duty in 80 posts. The National Guard had the men — 114,000 of them. They were not highly trained, nor did they have good equipment. But they were available, even if the Constitution prevented them from fighting outside of the country. President William McKinley made them federal volunteers. Many of the participating National Guard regiments kept their state identities by reporting at full strength and then appointing their own officers. … The Army’s ranks swelled to 168,929 men in May. By August [1898], 274,717 men were in uniform.

    N.B. US Library of Congress-Hispanic division (heh) estimates U.S. army strength in 1898 totalled 26,000, requiring the passage of the Mobilization Act of April 22 that appropriated for the first 125,000 volunteers, later increased to 200,000 and a regular army of 65,000.

    You got yer US freedom-fried culumny 2:

    McKinley settled $20M with Spain following the fall of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and occupation of Manila thanks to Filipino “allies” which had been engaged in war for independence since 1896. For a time, Britain, Germany and France deployed navies to the Pacific to catch America’s (south asian) crumbs.

    The Treaty of Paris aroused anger among Filipinos. Reacting to the US$20 million sum paid to Spain, La Independencia (Independence), a newspaper published in Manila by a revolutionary, General Antonio Luna, stated that “people are not to be bought and sold like horses and houses. If the aim has been to abolish the traffic in Negroes because it meant the sale of persons, why is there still maintained the sale of countries with inhabitants?” Tension and ill feelings were growing between the American troops in Manila and the insurgents surrounding the capital. In addition to Manila, Iloilo, the main port on the island of Panay, also was a pressure point. The Revolutionary Government of the Visayas was proclaimed there on November 17, 1898, and an American force stood poised to capture the city. Upon the announcement of the treaty [of Paris], the radicals, Mabini and Luna, prepared for war, and provisional articles were added to the constitution giving President Aguinaldo dictatorial powers in times of emergency. President William McKinley issued a proclamation on December 21, 1898, declaring United States policy to be one of “benevolent assimilation” in which “the mild sway of justice and right” would be substituted for “arbitrary rule.” When this was published in the islands on January 4, 1899, references to “American sovereignty” having been prudently deleted, Aguinaldo issued his own proclamation that condemned “violent and aggressive seizure” by the United States and threatened war.

    You got yer evangelical “American” business fervor captured by Hearst and Pulizer “yellow journalists” 3

    Partially, this American desire was based on the American public’s ignorance. Many Americans assumed that the Filipinos were all “heathens”. Though plenty of Americans knew the Filipinos were Catholics, many Protestants, who considered Catholicism only barely removed from heathenism, still largely dominated political decision making in the US.

    […]

    While Wall Street and business insiders like Mark Hanna had originally opposed the war, they all argued for the annexation of the Philippines. The Philippines, they said, had a population of 7 million people, which was a sizeable new market for American manufactured goods. Also, following Mahan’s theories, the Philippines would provide an American coaling station and naval base to protect US trade interests and maintain stability throughout Asian waters. With both the public and big business largely behind annexation, McKinley pushed for the acquisition of the Philippines.

    culminating in the greatest moral dilemma EVAH TOLD! 4

    “I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way-I don’t know how it was, but it came:

       (1) That we could not give them back to Spain-that would be cowardly and dishonorable;

       (2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable;

       (3) that we could not leave them to themselves-they were unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and

       (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.”

    ~~ Bill McKinley

    I wonder, idly, how either of the Naomi’s incorporate this startling document concerning the “free man’s burden” in their analyses of mainline (neo)liberalism(s). I can’t recall a reviewer who’s mentioned it or compared the Philippine-Iraq playbooks recently.

  5. about a tribe of herdsmen in the brush bordering the Sudan and Ethiopia in the south, and it was called “The Black Samurai.”

    Very informative…and just below there, on a map displayed, I saw Lake Turkana.  Made me think of you, friend.

    Stay well.  I’m watching the lightshow from a safe distance…

    TMWAP

  6. until I Googled…good thing Google…fascinating land, that of some of my ancestors.

    Such noble spirit lifts my heart.

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