neoconservadroid

The road to Najaf began in the early months after it became fairly obvious that there was going to be a bit more to this than merely cakewalking into Baghdad and turning the economy over to Halliburton while democracy spread throughout the Middle East.

Actually, the road began with the sacking of our first occupation administrator, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner.

Garner’s offense was that he clashed with the cabal of Neoconservatives within the administration.  There were probably several issues but we now know that two of the big ones had to do with elections and economics.

Specifically, Garner advocated early elections and opposed the Polish-style economic shock treatment of cramming down market capitalism too soon and without input of the Iraqi’s themselves.  Yes, the Iraqis would make mistakes but they would own their country and much more important than immediately changing the economic system was providing employment even if by inefficient bureaucracies and state owned industries.

// posted by Unknown @ 5:45 PM   permalink