Harpers is too stupid to put it online, but there is a fucking fantastic article by Naomi Klein in the last issue of Harper’s; I picked it up on vacation. I think Klein’s mostly an idiot, but she’s the only person so far who’s connected the dots between the fights over the Iraqi constitution, Iraqi trade policy, rules on foreign investment, and privitization of state assets.
Here’s the short version: as soon as the neocons landed, they implemented their fantasy version of the US economy in Iraq: flat taxes, no restrictions on foreign ownership, no taxes on capital, sale of all state assets, elimination of large segments of public sector jobs, etc., etc. Klein makes a pretty good case that their economic policies - or rather, the bizarre way they went about them - is actually at the root of the ongoing rebellions.
Basically, it’s a new slightly new spin on the mercantilist interpretation of what to do with a colony: open it up to outside investment - but not for exploitation like before; the theory is that when Wal-Mart and Citigroup come in and get to use the libertarian fantasy economy, everyone will get rich, Iraq will turn into a rich western-aligned democracy, and so on.
What actually happened is that the hordes of unemployed state employees and factory workers are running the rebellion. Klein says all of the back-and-forth between Sistani, Sadr, and the real story of the US occupation has actually been:
a) To whom, and for what price, Iraqi assets will be sold. Klein says that the US authorities have been squeezing the Iraqi factories in various ways to drive them out of business/make them cheaper, so US companies can pick up the state licenses cheaper.
b) The early handover of power was done to help Bush’s reelection, sure - but they also needed a way to end run the Geneva convention regulations on selling off state assets and what not - the laws put in there to keep occupying powers from making off with a conquered country. Laws written by the US occupying authority have no authority at all under the convention, so they needed a friendly puppet to be a legitimate signing authority on all those contracts. This may not actually work for various technical reasons (not withstanding the Sadr & Sistani resistance).
c) All of Sistani’s manuevering and Sadr’s fighting is because they don’t want these rules to pass, because they think the whole of Iraq’s wealth will end up transferred to the US and their country reduced to indentured servitude.
d) The Iraqi public at large isn’t stupid, and knows what’s going on. There’s a story where some factory workers are refusing to let their factory be sold to a US company - they’ve already killed one plant manager who agreed to let the sale go through, scuttling it. They fear both unemployment and “colonialism”, apparently.
It’s not bulletproof, but it’s the only coherent story of the postwar I’ve seen. And it finally explains why the hell Bremer spent all his time fiddling with stuff like a flat tax over there, rather than getting the water working. I don’t know what to think of it.