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Title: Neocon “Democracy” in Iraq Author: Kevin Carson Date: February 18, 2005 Language: en Topics: conservatism, Iraq, democracy, US foreign interventions Source: Retrieved on 3rd September 2021 from https://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/02/neocon-democracy-in-iraq.html
The main effect of all that ink-stained finger-waving and bathos, it
seems, is to guarantee the legacy of Paul Bremer, and to rubber-stamp
his neoliberal agenda for the near term.
MILAN RAI, ELECTRONIC IRAQ (via Progressive Review, February 16):
One US device is the Transitional Administrative Law, an interim
constitution written in Washington and imposed on Iraq in March 2004.
Jawad al-Maliki, member of Daawa, one of the two main Shia parties, has
pointed out correctly that ‘the body which we have elected has more
legitimacy than this document.’ Unfortunately, the TAL is self-defined
as the default constitution of Iraq until a permanent constitution has
been adopted in a referendum.
In a clause bitterly rejected by the Shia majority parties, the TAL
states that the permanent constitution must obtain the approval of at
least one-third of the voters in sixteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces.
This was put in to give Kurdish provinces a veto over the final text...
If this veto is used by the Kurds, the TAL continues to be the
constitution. (And, according to Article 59 of the TAL, the Iraqi
military will continue to function under US command.)
Equally important, it’s worth mentioning again, is a couple of other key
provisions of the TAL: the intellectual property agreements signed under
Bremer and the “privatization” (corporate looting) of state assets.
The effect of these provisions of the Transitional Administrative Law is
to give Washington’s most loyal clients in Iraq — the Kurds — a powerful
veto over political progress.
Another device for US control is the debt relief plan put together in
November 2004, under which some of Iraq’s creditor nations will forgive
some of Iraq’s debt (in stages), conditional upon the Iraqi government
following an IMF ‘liberalization’ program. This program will prioritize
foreign investors, privatization, and ‘tax reform’, but not unemployment
or poverty in Iraq....
Translated from neoliberal-speak into English, of course, that means
further massive looting of state assets, embodying the sweat equity of
Iraqi taxpayers, by politically connected insiders. If a slightly less
whipped government were in power, it might do what Sean Corrigan
recommends:
....much less “forgiveness,” no self-respecting libertarian would cavil
at a free people wholly repudiating any debts contracted in their name
by the members of their former political elites, especially where this
was done with the less-than-disinterested connivance of alien powers,
themselves pursuing either cynical Realpolitik or “Open Door”
corporatist vote-buying (most likely, both).
The Electronic Iraq article continues:
Another device for maintaining control was Paul Bremer’s appointment of
key officials for five year terms just before leaving office. In June
2004, the US governor ordered that the national security adviser and the
national intelligence chief chosen by the US-imposed interim prime
minister, Iyad Allawi, be given five-year terms, imposing Allawi’s
choices on the elected government. Bremer also installed
inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry, and formed and
filled commissions to regulate communications, public broadcasting and
securities markets.
Once again, as has been the case with assorted other velvet and orange
revolutions, along with sundry exercises in “people power,” what’s left
after the smoke clears is a neoconservative counterfeit democracy. What
the neocons call “democracy” is a Hamiltonian system in which the people
exercise formal power to elect the government, but the key directions of
policy are determined by a small and relatively stable Power Elite that
is insulated from any real public pressure.