Iraq - A Neo-Conservative Dream Mugged by Reality
New America Media, Q&A, 
, Sandip Roy, Posted: Nov 18, 2006
Editor's Note: Both parties remain deeply divided over Iraq and hope the James Baker-Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group can offer new ideas. But Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post says the opportunities in Iraq were squandered long ago when Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon won the battle with the State Department over who would call the shots in Baghdad. His account of the American occupation, Imperial Life in the Emerald City was nominated for a 2006 National Book Award. He spoke with New America Media editor and UpFront radio host, Sandip Roy.
Q:Who coined the term Emerald City?
A:A number of disaffected people who worked in the Green Zone began to come to the realization that they were living in a fantasy, that bore no relation to the real Iraq. So they began to jokingly refer to the Green Zone as the “Emerald City.” It was kind of like going to Disneyland. It was like popping a Prozac.
Q:I read even tomatoes from the fields of Iraq were not allowed into the Green Zone.
A:They didn’t want to buy food on the local market for fear it might be poisoned. No Iraqis were allowed to work in the kitchen. It was really an enclave that was populated not just by Americans, but by a lot of contract workers from India and Pakistan, the Philippines and Nepal, brought over by Haliburton subcontractors, who held on to their passports and didn’t pay them great wages at all.
And they were told to use the American lingo. I remember once asking for some French Fries, and an Indian server said to me, “Sir, we have no French Fries, only Freedom Fries.”
Q:Were there loyalty tests before you got a position in the Coalition Provisional Authority?
A:There was a very clear screening process that took place at the Pentagon. The Office of the White House Liaison to the Pentagon focused on trying to bring people in who would be politically loyal. People with skills in Arabic, post-conflict reconstruction, experience in the Middle East weren’t really valued. People were asked questions like, “What are your views on Roe v. Wade?” “Did you vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election?”
Q:But political ideology aside, are you saying unqualified people were put in charge of ministries?
A:There was a view at the highest levels of the Bush administration that bringing in these veteran Middle East experts, would be to bring in people with old ways of thinking, people who were insufficiently committed to democratizing the Middle East. They wanted people with no baggage.
Take “Skip” Berkel, who was the foremost post-conflict healthcare specialist. He has a Master’s in public health. He worked in Kosovo and Somalia and Northern Iraq. He’s a naval reservist with two Bronze Stars. The guy had a wall full of degrees, but he didn’t have a picture with the President. So he was replaced by a man who ran a large adoption agency that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.
Q:Would it have been really different if the State Department had won out in the power struggle with the Pentagon?
A:There would have always been an insurgency driven by zealots. But it didn’t have to be this bad. Here’s a country with 40% unemployment. What do Bremer’s economic advisors suggest? A new tax code, and not just a new tax code, but the dream of neoconservatives in this country - a 15% flat tax. We rewrote their laws governing intellectual property, microchip designs, genetically modified seed varietals, their traffic code. This is all irrelevant in a country where you just needed to get people back to work. I just think we squandered a great opportunity.
Q:But the goal was not just to build democracy, but also to build a free market.
A:Saddam Hussein had a very ossified, Socialist system. It was a very subsidy-laden economy. Fuel was almost free. Fertilizer was so cheap, that Iraqi farmers made more money by smuggling their fertilizer to Syria and selling it than actually using it. The economy was rotten to the core.
But, the question is, how do you go about fixing it? A number of Bremer’s economic advisors felt you privatize things right away. You remove the subsidies. It’s destabilizing in the short term, but it’s what we did in Eastern Europe, and we should do it in Iraq. Their view was that multinational companies like Nestle and Unilever would come in and build big factories. Well, you didn’t have the same security problems that you did in Eastern Europe. The airport wasn’t open. The drive from Jordan was a treacherous 12-hour trek through the desert, Eastern Europe wasn’t under foreign occupation.
By the way, there are international treaties of warfare that prevent an occupying power from selling off the real assets of an occupied country - a set of international laws that was conveniently forgotten in the Green Zone.
Q:Did anything go right?
A:In the world of higher education we promulgated a bill of rights that would provide academic freedom to professors. We did so little to rebuild Iraqi universities that were looted that most of the repairs were paid for by Shiite political parties. As a quid pro quo their activists hold sway on college campuses. So there may be a bill of rights but effectively the local Imam is in charge of what can or cannot be said.
Q:Do you think democracy was too much too soon?
A:You can’t just pop the lid off the pressure cooker in one fell swoop. We Americans, have come to think that democracy is easy. It’s not. It requires institutions, a bureaucracy, a free press. John Agresto, a lifelong friend of the Cheneys and Rumsfelds, told me how he got very little money to rebuild looted universities and said “I feel like a neoconservative who has been mugged by reality.”
Q:Does Paul Bremer share that view?
A:I certainly think Bremer was mugged by reality. I am not sure he realizes he has lost his wallet.
Listen to Rajiv Chandrasekaran on UpFront
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User Comments
Ed Melik on Nov 30, 2006 at 11:28:32 said:
Rajive has some very valid points in his Q&As. In addition I would like to add that the corruption and total inability of Bush clans to own and operate Iraq as their privat corporation, it has willfully and as a plan acted upon their mission to create chaos for as short term that turned out to be something they never were equipped to steer in thier planned direction. I would like to ask Rajive a very candid question here. Why did he not persu the criminalities of our government that are well documented by Rajive in relations to the cabinet mambers rotting at the Camp Cropper along with top scientists and other intellectuals who are deemed harmless by our own CIA/FBI/State Department as well as by the Ministry of Justice of Iraq? Is he under some threat from some unknown Pentagon/NeoCons mafia operatives? What is being reported by the US media and its inability to be directly at the scenes of destructions is not even 10% what in reality goes on in Iraq. The pleasure our boys (and sometime girls) in uniform take in killing the "f-ckin Iraqis" and more often their joy to go out "hunting" the sons of bitches is so unbecoming that it makes us all so shameful. In addition, no one has ever reported an epidemic of stealing from the Iraqis homes when they are raided. First thing our soliders do is to ask their money, jewlery and cash. It is something their higher ranking officers all know too well but don't dare to decipline them for there are hardly enough soliders as it is and if they are deciplined for such things as "stealing from the Iraqis" under "suspect" then it would be far more difficult for them get them to go out patrolling or go on a mission. I'm hoping that a group of self respecting Americans will find enough courage to take all these "freedom fighting" "democracy pushing" criminals in soldier's dressed and thier bosses to justice one day when this "quagmire" is over and done with.
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