'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

BUSH CONVERTS TO KEYNESIANISM-- JUST

BUSH CONVERTS TO KEYNESIANISM-- JUST NOT FOR DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION? Among the many unseemly and downright scandalous aspects of this war (which I need not list here), one of the most distasteful has been the spate of reports that the administration is already preparing to hand out large contracts to large U.S. firms, to engage in the "post-war reconstruction" of Iraq.

In a good piece in today's NYT, Elizabeth Becker quotes unnamed administration officials as saying the administration is already offering $1.5 billion-worth of contracts to private US companies-- and just $50 million to not-for-profit US groups like Save the Children-- while bypassing the many highly experienced multilateral relief and development organizations almost completely.

"Administration officials," she writes, "said it was important to give contracts to American corporations... as a way to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that the United States is a 'liberator' bringing economic prosperity and democratic institutions to their nation."

How's that again? Oh, now it's clear. The Iraqis, being "simple, ignorant souls", will presumably have forgotten at that point which foreign power it was that just weeks or days previously had bombed their infrasructure to smithereens. "Relief work," Becker quotes her sources as telling her, "will begin almost as soon as the first bombs are dropped and the military is confronted with Iraqi civilians in need of food, water, medicine and shelter."

Alert readers can probably guess the kinds of companies that have been invited to submit bids. Yes, there's Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root on the list, along with Bechtel and many others of the "usual suspects."

To add perspective to her story, Becker uses some quotes from Frances Cook, a woman who was previously US Ambassador to Oman and is now a consultant to several Middle Eastern companies. Cook's been lobbying (why am I not surprised) for Middle Eastern companies to get some of the contracting action.

But actually, the points she makes are fair enough. "They are already screaming in the Middle East-- you call us corrupt, look at you giving contracts to American companies and no one else," she is quoted as saying.

Yes, it does all leave a very nasty taste in the mouth, doesn't it? First the Bushies get to gratuitously bomb the country to bits. And then, almost immediately, they sweep in as "liberators", asking for laurel wreaths and a welcome mat because they're handing out contracts to Halliburton to come and fix the plumbing.

Elision alert! Elision alert! Did anyone hear a swish as one of the Horseman of the Apocalypse rode through there? He was in there somewhere, I swear.

So yes, distasteful. But maybe there's another way to look at it? Couldn't this be the ultimate Keynesian scheme? After all, the British economic guru had famously recommended someplace that, given that government spending is such an effective stimulant for the general economy, it might well make sense for the government to hire one set of workers to dig holes in the streets, and another set to come by the next day and fill them in...

Of course, the Bushies would probably rather die than admitting to being Keynesians. John Maynard Keynes-- whose theories helped inspire the New Deal and who networked personally to help bring about the creation of the World Bank-- advocated economic policies directly contrary to the Bushies' favored cure-all of tax cuts for the rich...

And the administration is notably not proposing any plans to have these same companies come into US cities and regions and undertake the kinds of large-scale infrastructure-development projects that so much of the country needs...

So could we see this entire war-in-Iraq thing as a big Keynesian dig-and-fill-up-the-holes project?

Nah. On a horrible day like today, even cute humor doesn't work. War still stinks. It has no redeeming value whatsoever and will only cause further waves of violence to ricochet down through history. Unless, G-d help us all, we can all get a grip and step out of this paradigm of violence and counter-violence.