Great Book
I stayed up way too late last night finishing IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY. This is a real page turner and I highly recommend that people buy, check out from the library or borrow this book. It is a classic example of why mixing pure ideology with politics is a disaster no matter whether you are left or right, and it’s a damning indictment of the Bush administration and the Republicans. Or as Bill Mahr would say “The reason Republican’s hate government is because they are so bad at it.”
I was against the Iraq war from day one because I think the idea of preemptive war is a dangerous idea. I also didn’t believe for a moment that they had WMD’s — wanted them, yes, had them, no — and the humanitarian arguments put forth by Bush and company rang very damn hollow to me. They love dictators if they are the right kind of dictators. That being said immediately after the invasion I thought “well, it’s done, and maybe it won’t be too awful.” And then the so called reconstruction began. Rajiv Chandrasekaran dispassionately presents events as they occurred. It will leave you breathless.
Everyone has heard about disbanding the army, but it goes deeper than that. These were supply side Republicans who abhorred any form of socialism. For almost a quarter of a century Iraqi’s had been receiving free medicine and medical care, food subsidies, gasoline subsidies. Now, I’m a good capitalist, but when you have invaded and are occupying a country with an unemployment rate in excess of 40% it’s probably a bad idea to tell people they now have to start paying for basic serivces when they have no money with which to pay for them.
They wanted to sell off all the state owned factories, but the coalition forces had allowed the looting to destroy the infrastructure so nobody wanted to buy the factories that had no equipment. Also, why would you buy a factory when you had maybe six hours of electricity per day, and usually only three? They wrote out these traffic regulations in excrutiating detail, but the army had blocked off so many of the roads that a trip that used to take ten minutes now took an hour. There were no police to direct the traffic so the snarls became worse and worse.
The hospitals had no blood, no equipment (all looted), very little medicine and NO ELECTRICITY. The man they ultimately put in charge of the medical system had no experience in post conflict reconstruction, but he was a good loyal Republican/Bushie. He put all his emphasis on a no smoking campaign and creating a formulary for which drugs could be purchased. Meanwhile premature babies were dying when the electricity to their incubators went out.
What happened to the universities was nothing short of criminal. The man who was supposed to reconstruct them was actually from Santa Fe, and he went from loyal Republican to total disgust. There were no desks, books, lab equipment, etc., but the monies granted by the government were to go to _American_ universities that were supposed to join in partnerships with Iraqi universities.
I could write for hours, but it’s easier if you read this terrific book. It will either leave you stunned into depression or totally outraged. I’m outraged, and wish there was _something_ I could do to help punish the people who created this disaster. Sometimes I wish I believed in hell, then Bush, Cheney and company could rot there.
Melinda
September 28th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Not to mention they allowed 5000 years of culture to be stolen from the museums. But there was a guard in front of the Oil Ministery.
Chimpanzees would have done a better job. At least they won’t have pretended to be more intelligent than they are.
September 28th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
What you said.
*sigh*