No Plan For Post-War Reconstruction!?!?!?

Ah, I am reminded, another of those nice spins virtually uncontested in the media, and even mainstream leftist blogs: that the Bush Administration had no plan for post-war reconstruction.

It did have one. Just not the one the State Department had.

One that failed miserably, and predictably.

One that the political and economic elites won't talk about (hell, won't even admit to themselves), as it is a real-life demonstration of the idiocy of the currently all-pervasive neoliberal socio-economic philosophy (or should I call it cult).

The Bush Admin plan was to turn Iraq into a free-enterprise paradise, a reconstruction by a boom of private investment.

Who reminded me was Naomi Klein, who wrote a long article in Harper's Magazine.

The teams of KPMG accountants, investment bankers, think-tank lifers, and Young Republicans that populate the Green Zone have much in common with the IMF missions that rearrange the economies of developing countries from the presidential suites of Sheraton hotels the world over. Except for one rather significant difference: in Iraq they were not negotiating with the government to accept their “structural adjustments” in exchange for a loan; they were the government.

As implied above, the issue has not just Iraq or US, but a global relevance, I recommend everyone to read it in full. One fitting quote here:

The CPA pays up to $1,000 per imported blast wall; local manufacturers say they could make them for $100. Minister Tofiq says there is a simple reason why the Americans refuse to help get Iraq’s cement factories running again: among those making the decisions, “no one believes in the public sector.”

That is also true for a lot of free-market reformers here in Central-Eastern Europe, as well as in Western Europe.