By Mark Sommer and - -
BERKELEY, Apr 1 2003 (IPS)

If anyone outside the US harboured lingering doubts about the motives behind the invasion of Iraq, they were surely put to rest recently by the shameless profiteering of Bush administration officials and their extended financial family in both the destruction and reconstruction of Iraq, writes Mark Sommer, internationally-syndicated columnist and radio host who directs the Mainstream Media Project, a US-based effort to bring new voices and innovative ideas to the broadcast media. In this article for IPS, the author writes that the double burden of bearing massive reconstruction costs for Iraq while enduring the deconstruction of their own schools, hospitals, roads, police and fire protection can\’t help but produce severe cognitive dissonance even in the sleepwalking centre of American politics. The United States is rich, but not so rich that it can sustain both an empire and a democracy. Facing such public pressures, and never much interested in reconstructing anything Iraqi other than its oil fields, the Bush team may quietly abandon the effort altogether. We need only consider its last conquest, Afghanistan, to see a nation \’\’seduced and abandoned\’\’ by an empire too busy making new messes to clean up its old.

If anyone outside the United States harboured lingering doubts about the motives behind the US invasion of Iraq, they were surely put to rest in recent weeks by shameless profiteering by Bush administration officials and their extended financial family in both the destruction and reconstruction of Iraq.

Costs of a reconstruction project slated to be the largest since the rebuilding of Western Europe after World War II may reach 250 billion dollars over the next decade. The project will be spearheaded by former General Jay Garner, until recently president of SY Technology, a defense contractor specializing in Star Wars missile defences. Coincidentally, just as Garner moved back into government his company won a 1.5 billion-dollar contract to provide logistics services to US special forces, and another to build Patriot missiles for Israel and Kuwait.

Halliburton, the huge oil exploration company headed by Dick Cheney until his (s)election as vice president, has also secured huge contracts to provide necessities and amenities (golf courses, gyms and Burger Kings) to US Army legions and to construct and maintain military bases ”wherever troops go” over the next ten years. Given the Bush administration’s imperial designs, ”wherever” could range far and wide.

Through its subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Halliburton has established the gold standard for guaranteed profits and freedom from accountability through ”cost-plus-award-fee” contracts that leave the company essentially free to charge what it will and still earn a bonus.

Bush administration operatives plan to use revenues from a derelict Iraqi oil industry reconstructed by Halliburton and US oil companies to finance much of the reconstruction effort. But independent analysts note that between a crumbling pre-war infrastructure, uncounted billions in damage wrought by the US invasion, 130 billion dollars in foreign debt, and 172 billion dollars in unsettled claims from the first Gulf War, it could be years before revenues from a reconstructed Iraqi oil industry can be taken to the bank.

The mayhem that has followed the precipitous collapse of Saddam’s regime vindicates pre-war warnings by US Army Chief of Staff Eric Shenseki that restoring law and order will require ”several hundred thousand” US troops for several years. With the cost of equipping and deploying each US soldier a staggering 265,000 dollars a year, the price tag for just one year of US occupation would come to a debt-defying 80 billion dollars.

Given fierce wrangling between the US and the antiwar coalition in Western Europe and Russia over who will govern after Saddam, who will reconstruct, and who will pay for it as well as US insistence on maintaining a ”dominant influence” in postwar Iraq, it is likely that the lion’s share of the bill will be delivered to the White House.

The world that voted against war couldn’t prevent the Americans from launching their pre-emptive attack, but if not given a substantive role in postwar reconstruction and governance, it may well stand aside and leave the resulting mess for the Yanks to clean up.

Moreover, many institutional and individual investors could start withdrawing their money from a US economy that is no longer the attractive haven it was until two years ago. With a stagnant stock market, a sinking dollar, rapidly rising debt, and record trade deficits, even investors solely in search of high returns may find it more profitable to turn elsewhere.

The Bush team is masterful at conquest and destruction but hapless at governance and reconstruction. In fact, direct costs of the invasion of Iraq –more than USD 100 billion– and the looming costs of reconstruction are rapidly deconstructing the American economy. The United States is rich, but not so rich that it can sustain both an empire and a democracy. In the very act of asserting its imperial dominance, Bush and Co. are hastening the definitive decline of American empire.

Americans who sheepishly followed their president into war face gargantuan costs for occupation and reconstruction at a time when, even before these costs are factored in, every state is being forced to make drastic cuts in services while a comatose Congress approves still more top-tier tax breaks.

The double burden of bearing massive reconstruction costs for Iraq while enduring the destruction of their own schools, hospitals, roads, police and fire protection can’t help but produce severe cognitive dissonance even in the sleepwalking centre of American politics.

Facing certain public pressure and never much interested in reconstructing anything Iraqi other than its oil fields, the Bush team may quietly abandon the effort altogether. We need only consider its last conquest, Afghanistan, a nation ”seduced and abandoned” by an empire too busy making new messes to clean up its old.

While Afghanistan’s US-installed leader, Hamid Karzai, makes pitiful pleas for the US and the world to fulfil their financial pledges, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz — saddle up for Syria and beyond. (END\COPYRIGHT IPS)

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