From tomdispatch:
This is an interesting perspective on how we got to where we are in Iraq today that I haven't heard discussed much yet--that the state of near chaos and near all-out civil war in which we now find Iraq wasn't necessarily the
inevitable end result of the invasion. Instead, Schwartz argues that the insurgency is a product of popular resentment and desperation resulting from severe
economic depression, caused by the CPA's extreme privatization regime in the immediate aftermath of the toppling of the regime. This economic desperation fueled massive (but more or less peaceful in the beginning) protests, which provoked repressive
military reprisals from US forces who wrongly saw these protestors as hold-outs or dead-enders of Saddam's regime who had to be crushed, and so on, and three years hence, here we are...
It is interesting to consider the possibility that even though the war was wrong to have started in the first place, that it perhaps wasn't doomed to failure from the beginning, if only it hadn't been executed by criminally incompetent zealots. I don't mean to suggest that under such a hypothetical success scenario the end would have justified the means, however, it is that much sadder when you realize that, putting aside for a minute the fact that we should never have invaded to begin with, maybe, just maybe, the tragedy that unfolded in the aftermath could have been averted by a more competent administration? Schwartz's concluding paragraph:
Certainly, an alien army entered Iraq, destroyed that country's sovereignty, and stoked nationalist resentments. But major media outlets in this country have lost track of the fact that what also entered Iraq was an American administration wedded at home and abroad to a fierce, unbending, and alien set of economic ideas. By focusing attention only on the lack of U.S. (and Iraqi) military power brought to bear in the early days after the fall of Baghdad, they ignore some of the deeper reasons why many Iraqis were willing to confront a formidable military machine with only small arms and their own wits. They ignore -- and cause the American public to ignore -- the fact that there was little resistance just after the fall of Baghdad and that it expanded as the economy declined and repression set in. They ignore the eternal verity that the willingness to fight and die is regularly animated by the conviction that otherwise things will only get worse.
It's a very interesting read and I think this largely ignored history needs to become part of the national discourse on Iraq. I am usually what might be termed a "lurker" here at DailyKos. I read the front page, the recommended diaries, and some of the more recent diaries, and I occasionally comment, but this story seems important enough to justify a rare diary entry. I originally found this link on Eric Alterman's blog at MSNBC, which I also highly recommend.