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The prudence of a statesman
Using corporate power Bush saved Middle-Eastern democracy
By Johanan Raatz
Regardless of whether one likes Bush or favored the Iraq war, everyone can agree that what actually happened -the liberation of twenty-seven million Iraqi’s- was a very good thing.
Last semester I received feedback from a number of interested readers regarding my article “Capitalism and Democracy.” The article discussed how statesmen could correct contradictions in a democracy through careful use of corporate power. People were curious if there were other examples I could give of this. Some suggested I write a follow-up article giving an example in current politics. So I decided to do this in regards to the politics surrounding the Iraq war.
We all remember the war that overthrew Saddam just five years ago. Originally it all went as planned. Twenty-seven million Iraqis were liberated from a brutal tyrant who tortured and killed his own people. Our troops were greeted as liberators and given flowers as they freed one city after another. And then the Iraqi people were introduced to real democracy for the first time in many years. Everything was wonderful, but unfortunately all good things must come to an end.
We were supposed to have left once the post-war violence died down, but for some reason terrorists and insurgents seemed to want us to stay. Soon the majority of people here lost the will to continue to fight the terrorists in Iraq.
Regardless of whether one likes Bush or favored the Iraq war, everyone can agree that what actually happened -the liberation of twenty-seven million Iraqis- was a very good thing. Even the radical leftists from Students for a Democratic Society would have to agree that the democratization of Iraq was good, even if they hate how it was accomplished.
Unfortunately, most of the American people seem to have lost sight of the larger picture on this issue, and now seem to be opposed to the further establishment of democracy in the Middle East. This creates a rather peculiar situation. We now have a democratic consensus that is actually opposed to democracy. This is quite ironic and fits the description I gave of a democratic contradiction or failure in my earlier article.
I find what Bush did to resolve, or rather pre-empt, this contradiction to be very interesting because it corresponds to what I explored in my previous article. In particular he leveraged the corporate power of a number of large companies to address the democratic failure.
The details of how he did this are interesting. Wars are expensive, and because of that they often require the assistance of large corporations in their execution. In the case of Iraq, defense contractors and oil companies profited from the fallout of the Iraq war.
Now being a politician, Bush knows how much pressure corporations can exert on the political process. He also probably guessed that the support for the war would eventually wane. To pre-empt this failure he brought corporations into the picture and tied their economic interests to the war, thereby ensuring that they would provide sufficient counter-pressure to the political process to continue the war.
Corporations such as Halliburton, Aegis Defense Services, Blackwater and the Titan corporation all received no-bid contracts to do their work in Iraq. PMC companies such as Blackwater have grown exponentially under Bush such that they are now able to leverage the political process thereby creating a sort of feedback loop. The government enables them to grow which in turn enables them to leverage the government more efficiently to stay in Iraq.
All of this probably explains why many anti-war politicians, even including presidential hopeful Barack Obama, seem to be in favor of the war in practice. I would be interesting to see the consequences of an Obama administration defying the economic interests of over a hundred thousand extremely well-paid, gung-ho military contractors.
It appears Bush wisely anticipated the opposition to the war and Iraqi democracy from the start. By strategically inserting corporate interests he managed to correct the democratic failure of democracy, opposing democracy before it even occurred. Because of this, history will no doubt credit President Bush as the man who saved Middle-Eastern democracy.
> Comments
Terrence on Sep 09, 2008 at 12:45 PM:
Um isn't their a name for the union of state and business interests? Like fascism?
Johanan on Sep 09, 2008 at 03:06 PM:
Well Lincoln leveraged corporate interests to win the Civil War. Was he a fascist?
Japan has a union of state and business interests under MITI today and they aren't fascist.
HK on Sep 11, 2008 at 01:25 PM:
You are a genius Johanan. This article is absolutely brilliant. It's good to know we have people like you working at the Post.
Ron on Sep 13, 2008 at 09:55 AM:
"the liberation of twenty-seven million Iraqis"
they are not liberated while there is an occupying army there.
Johanan on Sep 14, 2008 at 07:04 PM:
"they are not liberated while there is an occupying army there."
Of course they are. If we weren't there their democracy and hence their freedoms could not be defended against the extremists that seek to overthrow it.