Only two days after holding a hearing on Blackwater's atrocities, Rep. Henry Waxman is on the warpath against the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the State Department for attempting to cover up the unwillingness of the al-Maliki government to do anything about massive and systematic corruption in Iraq.
Waxman's attacks on Blackwater and the official U.S. cover-up on Iraqi official corruption are laudable, but they fail to go to the root of the problem, which is the nature of military occupation itself.
At the hearing of Waxman's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held today, which I heard this morning on radio, Waxman railed against Rice for the State Department's failure to take corruption in the Iraqi government seriously and for classifying a previously unclassified draft the U.S. Embassy staff study leaked to the news media last week. The draft concluded that the al-Maliki government "is not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anti-corruption laws," and that the prime minister's office has rendered his own government's independent anti-corruption agency impotent.
Waxman questioned whether al-Maliki could be an effective prime minister, given his undermining of his own government's Commission on Public Integrity. He took Rice to task for the anemic to non-existent State Department effort on the corruption issue, noting that most members of the Department committee responsible for the issue fail to even show at its meetings.
It is obvious that the Bush administration has adopted a policy of trying to minimize the issue of Iraqi government corruption, just as it has tried to minimize the issue of Blackwater's unregulated terrorism against Iraqi civilians. But if Waxman and the Democrats are suggesting that the fix is to get the administration to tighten up its oversight in Iraq, they are essentially proposing a fresh coat of lipstick on the very big and very dirty pig of U.S. occupation.
Saddam Hussein's regime was extremely corrupt, with the oil riches of the country providing vast opportunities for graft that enriched his family and cronies. But the U.S. occupation creates a system in Iraq in which the level of graft and corruption achieved has unquestionably dwarfed that of the pre-occupation regime.
Last November, Stuart Bowen, the U.S. "Special Inspector-General for Iraq" told the BBC that Iraqi government corruption could amount to $4 billion a year, which represents over 10 percent of the national income. Few observers in Iraq doubt that this is many times worse than what existed under Saddam. As early as May 1965, an anti-Saddam Shiite businessman told a foreign reporter, "I'd say that about 10 per cent of business was corrupt under Saddam. Now it's about 95 per cent. We used to have one Saddam, now we have 25 of them."
The U.S. occupation accomplished this by eliminating any effective central government authority, thus creating a political-administrative chaos, and by dumping hundreds of billions of dollars on the country in foreign assistance. Given that combination, the explosion of corruption was as certain as the rising of the sun. The same thing happened in South Vietnam during the chaos of U.S. of occupation from 1965 to 1973.
The benefactors of the chaos are the Shiite and Sunni politicians who have official responsibility for natural resources or foreign assistance and the militias who control virtually the entire Shiite south and most of the greater Baghdad area.
The apologists for long-term occupation would argue that the Bush administration could and should have made the control of fraud and corruption a top priority. The problem, however, is that the occupation of a country by a foreign army is in its essence a system of lawlessness that corrupts not only the indigenous elite associated with it but the U.S. officials responsible for managing the country.
It is well known that the corporate friends of the Bush administration made out like bandits in the anarchy of Iraq. But the corrupting influence of the opportunities presented by a country without effective political authority pervaded the Green Zone from the start. Consider the case of Air Force Col. Kimberly D. Olson, one of the first female pilots in the Air Force, who was accused in government documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times of "profiting from the post-invasion chaos" by using her position to win more than $3 million in contracts for a South African security firm for which she established a U.S. branch.
Both Gen. Jay Garner and Paul Bremer, the first two U.S. proconsuls in occupied Iraq, came to Olson's defense. Gen. Jay Garner said she was his "right arm", while Bremer insisted that Olsen was being punished for trying to do her best in a chaotic situation, and that her prosecution was "an overzealous prosecution that might impinge on reconstruction efforts". Bremer's comment accurately reflects the attitude of tolerance for the rape and pillage of the country that accompanied the absolute power that he and his staff had over a country without its own political authority.
The same chaos and lack of accountability that created the seemingly limitless graft and corruption that has engulfed Iraq also led to the wanton murder of civilians by Blackwater. The only way to end both plagues on the people of Iraq - and to provide an incentive for al-Maliki to take political reconciliation seriously -- is to pull the plug on the occupation itself.
The occupation of Japan went smooth because the Japanese society was homogeneous and the people worshipped Emperor Hirohito as a god. Once Hirohito submitted to MacArthur and American control the people followed.
The West German's were accepting of American presence due to the threat of Russia, and the divided nature of the country which put it into a permanent state of siege until the Berlin wall fell. We also weren't the only Nation occupying Germany as well, so resentment, that would have been directed at a single occupier, was diffused by the structure of the occupation.
In the case of South Korea, again it is the threat of the North that makes American presence acceptable. I was briefly in Seoul while in transit to the Philippines and I was struck at how unfriendly the Koreans I came across were. I have to admit I spent an extremely brief time there, but the impression I had was that Koreans weren't too happy to see an American. Frankly what I saw primarily on the faces of the employees of the Seoul Airport was a scowl. I'm fairly certain that the South Koreans will show the US the door swiftly once they reconcile with the North.
When I see the situation in Iraq it strikes me as similar to the US occupation of the Philippines from 1898 until 1946. The US never reached a level of confidence with the Filipinos, stalling the creation of an armed forces until it was too late for it to be of real value when WWII broke out. Corruption was rampent in the Philippines during occupation and in the 1920's the Philippine National Bank was found to be insolvent due to gross mismanagement and corruption which occurred under the nose of the US Colonial Adminstration.
Corruption should be expected in occupied Iraq if history be the guide.
Vice President Dick Cheney made millions of dollars on his Halliburton options, after having pushed over $40 billion in contracts to his old company. We have no reconstruction to show for it, only over-billing for gas, meals and cleaning services. Privatized, U.S.-owned security firms, Iraqi and American, costing us five times what our soldiers are paid, operating with immunity and without accountability. Billions of dollars in cash, weapons and oil have simply gone missing without question or outrage.
What we have to show for our more than four years at war is thousands of dead and wounded, leveled cities without adequate water, sewage or electricity, and taxpayers holding a bill that is running nearly $280 million a day in direct costs, and according to economists, another $440 million a day in indirect costs—$720 million a day and rising.
Our leaders tell us we will need to spend more, and many more years fighting these people.—a people that love their country, their culture and way of life, a people that did not start this war. A people, like the Vietnamese who will resist foreign occupation with every means at their disposal until the foreigners are gone.
Maybe the face of Ciara Durkin, and the seemingly bottomless depth of corruption our government finds itself, and that she represents, will move the American people to end this war of choice, and bring our troops home.
The only problem is that unlike the America in the Vietnam war, our now corrupt media won't show us her face.
When I left Vietnam in 1971, I knew we would not win a war against a people that loved their country, their culture and way of life. I knew that despite our military superiority, our training and arming Vietnamese troops, and the installation of Quisling governments, Vietnam would be won by the Vietnamese. These people would resist foreign occupation with every means at their disposal until the foreigners were gone.
However, it would be another year before a face would be put on that war that would finally bring our troops home. That face was Lt. Calley’s. Although we could see the human and material wreckage we had caused nightly on TV, had elected a president three years earlier that said he’d end this war, and we had killed millions of Vietnamese, it wasn’t until the court martial of Lt. Calley for the “My Lai Massacre” that the senseless death and destruction finally resonated to a crescendo of disgust in America. We were gone in months.
The Afghan-Iraq war now has a face. It’s the face of Ciara Durkin, a woman in the Massachusetts National Guard. She was found dead with a bullet in her head within the secure walls of Bagram Air Base, last week.
Before returning to Afghanistan three weeks earlier, she asked her family that should she die, to have her death investigated. As a bookkeeper in finance, she had found irregularities, and told them that as a result she had made some enemies.
And, that is the ugly under-belly of this immoral and unjustified war against innocents—unmitigated greed and corruption. Greed which has started at the top and has worked its way down out of Dick Cheney’s office through Congress., to Kuwait, to Iraq, to Afghanistan and Ciara Durkin’s murder.
Could it be that we are arming and training Iraqi People,,,
to kill other Iraqi people,,,,,
and telling them if they kill enough Iraqi people,,,,,
they will be free?
All the best
Knute (Neo-LIB)
Sorry!
I was thinking Viet Nam again.
Sorry!!!!
I forgot. In this war,,,,,, GOD is on our side!
Sorry.
All the best
Knute (Neo-LIB)
The oil is preserved and traded on the basis of the US dollar. Other Muslim countries get the message. Even a loss such as in Vietnam is highly profitable. KB&R was there. Oil services companies have done well financially despite the civil war.
Corruption always flourishes. In Germany, the best "china" was smuggled out for the GIs's wives. My wife, who is from Germany, would see it around the homes of American veterans. Iraqi antiquities show up in New York more and more. There is even an attempt to legalize the theft.
until the majority of americans promote a third party and see themselves as imperialists we will continue to have these wars for profits and an mercenary military and a mercenary paid for hire killers. ie blackwater
9 yards...and to Ben, there WAS looting and other crime in Germany post-WWII, look it up on the web, there. Of course there was MORE of it
during the war itself, nevermind entire
cities basically being razed, anytime there's war, there's lawlessness with it. That's why
it's SO important that Congress take issue with
the entire situation...
http://digg.com/world_news/New_proof_of_Japanese_World_War_II_sex_slaves
http://www.lewrockwell.com/epstein/epstein14.html
http://germany.usembassy.gov/kennedy_speech.html
Forbid funding of the mercenaries.