Iraq's instability serves U.S. corporate interests. [View All]

[G_j]

Chaos Theory
by Mark LeVine

A recent visitor to Fallujah says Iraq's instability serves U.S. corporate interests.
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Mark LeVine is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. He is the co-editor, with Pilar Perez and Viggo Mortensen, of Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation (Perceval Press, 2003) and author of the forthcoming tentatively titled Why They Don't Hate Us: Islam and the World in the Age of Globalization (Oneworld Publications, 2004).

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10195

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It is perhaps hard for Americans to understand the U.S. occupation of Iraq in the context of globalization. But Iraq today is clearly the epicenter of that trend, and in this context, chaos is king. Here, military force was used to seize control of the world's most important commodity: oil. And that's only the beginning.

Corporate prospectors allied with the United States search the country like safari hunters on elephants for any opportunity to profit from Iraq's misery—that's how conspicuous they are. Meanwhile, inside Baghdad's green zone, where the U.S. occupation headquarters are located, their innocuous-looking counterparts draft regulations for privatizing everything from health care to prisons.

It is chaos that makes this whole system possible. Without the chaos, Iraqis would not allow the country to be sold off wholesale, or allow the U.S. troops to remain after the June 30th "transfer" of sovereignty.

Without chaos, there is little reason to assume that the imposition of neoliberal globalization, which has wreaked such havoc in so many other countries of the developing world, would be in the process of entrenchment in Iraq. Without the chaos, there would be more reporting on the appalling conditions in the hospitals and schools, which are violations of the United States' obligations as occupying power under the Geneva and Hague Conventions.

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