[Mb-civic] Naomi Klein--Why are we in Iraq?

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

One month ago there was a teach-in on Iraq in Washington DC.  
There were several very powerful and succinct presentations 
about the war and its causes and effects.  Following is one by 
Naomi Klein, which very clearly and concisely clarifies the 
motives of the U.S. government....

http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/teach-in/March-24-transcript-IPS.pdf

National Teach-In On Iraq: How Can We End This War March 
24, 2005

We know the reasons we were told by President Bush
and his administration were lies. Lies about weapons of mass 
destruction, lies about the socalled Iraqi nuclear program, lies 
about the so-called links between Saddam Hussein and al-
Qaeda. All of them were lies. I™d like you to open tonight™s 
presentations with some sense of why we really went to war in 
Iraq. What was the real reason for the Bush administration 
behind this invasion and this occupation?

Naomi Klein, Author, Filmmaker

I™m very thrilled to be here and I think that that is the central 
question that we need to answer. Because when we identify the 
reasons why we really went to war, not the cover reasons or the
re-branded reasons “ freedom and democracy “ but the real 
reasons, then I think that we can become more effective anti-war 
activists. Because the most effective way, the most strategic
way, to try to stop this war, to try to stop this occupation and 
prevent future wars, is to deny the people who wage these wars 
their spoils, to make war unprofitable. We can™t do that unless 
we effectively identify the goals of war.

I also think it™s extremely important to understand that the most 
powerful movement against this war and this occupation is 
within Iraq itself. And that our movements must be not just in
verbal solidarity but in active and tangible solidarity with 
movements in Iraq fighting actively to end the occupation of 
their country. We need to take our direction from them.
So in terms of answering the question œwhy - obviously it™s 
complex. I was in Iraq a year ago trying to answer that question 
and one of the most effective ways I found to do that was to
follow the bulldozers, to follow the construction machinery 
because I was in Iraq to research the so-called reconstruction. 
And one of the things that really struck me most was the absence
of reconstruction machinery, of cranes and bulldozers in 
downtown Baghdad. I expected to see reconstruction all over the 
place.

I saw bulldozers in military bases. I saw bulldozers in the Green 
Zone, there was a huge amount of construction going always 
going on in the Green Zone, building up Bechtel™s hq, getting the 
new U. S. embassy ready, there was always a ton of construction 
going on at all of the  military bases. On the streets of Baghdad, 
you would see the former ministry buildings absolutely 
untouched still lying in rubble. They hadn™t even cleared away 
the rubble, let alone started the reconstruction process.

The one crane I saw in the streets of Baghdad was hoisting a 
billboard. I thought I was actually seeing reconstruction but as 
we got closer what I saw was an advertisement being put up. 
This is one of the surreal things about Baghdad right now is that 
the old city lies in ruin but you see these shiny new billboards 
advertising the glories of the global economy. And the message 
is sort of œeverything you were before isn™t worth rebuilding.  
We™re going to import a brandnew country. I think of it as the 
Iraq version of the œExtreme Makeover actually.



I don™t think it™s a coincidence that Americans were at home 
watching this explosion of extreme reality television shows 
where people™s bodies were being surgically remade and their
homes were being bulldozed and remade, because the message 
of these shows of course is: 

everything you are now, everything you own, everything you do 
sucks. And we™re going to completely erase it and rebuild it with 
a team of experts. You should just go limp and let the
experts take over. And this is exactly what the œExtreme 
Makover Iraq version was.

There was no role for Iraqis in this process. It was all foreign 
companies modernizing the country. And Iraqis with PhDs who 
built their engineering system who built their telephone
system had no place in the reconstruction process at all. Also if 
we want to know what the goals of the war are, we have to look 
at what Paul Bremer actually did when he first arrived in
Iraq. He laid off 500,000 people, 400,000 of them were soldiers. 
And he shredded Iraq™s constitution and wrote a series of 
economic laws which The Economist magazine described as
œa wish list for foreign investment. 

Basically, they turned Iraq into a laboratory for the most radical 
free-market policies that the American Enterprise Institute and 
the Cato Institute dream about here in Washington, D. C. but
are only able to impose in relative slow-motion here at home. 
But in Iraq, where there wasn™t a democracy, which was the 
point, they were able to turn it into this kind a laboratory.
So we just have to look at their policies. We don™t have to wield 
secret documents or have massive conspiracy theories. We just 
have to look at what they did. We just have to look at the
fact that it was enduring military bases that they rebuilt. That 
they didn™t rebuild the country. In their very first act of 
protecting the oil ministry but letting the rest of the country burn, 
this message from Donald Rumsfeld: œStuff happens.  This 
almost glory and delight, this apocalyptic glee in allowing Iraq to 
burn. Because in letting the country be erased, it was a
blank slate to be rebuilt in their image. This was the goal of the 
war. We just have to look at what they did. We don™t have to 
look at what they say.

---


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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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