inside the glass house

Break and build: Bias and blunder in US Iraq policy
COLOMBO-- The flawed US policy on Iraq is predicated on a simple self-motivated principle: Everything that the American military destroys will eventually be rebuilt by American corporations.

In one of his strip cartoons recently, Garry Trudeau portrayed a US military official as saying: "We break, they fix. We break, they fix. An endless cycle of profit." Since war has always been big business, everyone in the warring nation profits from the carnage and destruction. The weapons that are deployed or destroyed in war are replaced by new weapons systems.

But the multi-billion-dollar contracts for these new weapons are doled out to American contractors who are mostly contributors to the ruling Republican Party or key funders of presidential elections.

The US energy conglomerate Halliburton, once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has already received over $2 billion in Iraqi contracts. But what is outrageous is that the company was awarded $1.2 billion worth of these contracts on a non-competitive basis, shutting out all other contractors.

Ted Turner, the former head of Cable News Network (CNN), thinks that the Bush administration's "break and build" policy in Iraq is totally off the wall. "We paid $80 billion to bomb Iraq and destroy its infrastructure," he says. "Now, a few months later, we're spending $87 billion to rebuild it. That's bad business," he adds sarcastically.

Last week, the Bush administration triggered another controversy by ruling that no lucrative contracts for rebuilding Iraq will be given to countries that opposed the war, including France, Germany and Russia.

A total of 26 mega contracts worth $18.6 billion will cover the initial stages of reconstructing the war-battered country. But the bulk of these contracts will go to American corporations. The crumbs from the table will fall into the hands of some of America's coalition partners in Iraq, including Britain, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Spain, Poland, Italy and the Philippines.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already cried foul pointing out that the exclusion proposal was both "divisive" and "unhelpful" in stabilising the situation in Iraq. "The stability of Iraq is in everyone's interest, and we should pool our efforts and avoid steps and decisions that are divisive," he said.

The US move also reinforces the Bush administration's policy of punishing countries that refuse to toe its political line. But these are also countries that depend on US and Western aid for their economic survival.

Earlier this year, the US cut off military aid to countries that refuse to sign bilateral agreements exempting American citizens and soldiers from prosecution by the newly-established International Criminal Court (ICC).

These acts of public arm-twisting by Washington continue to anger American allies who are livid about US arrogance. And flaunting that arrogance is certainly not meant to win the hearts and minds of American allies overseas.

The decision to snub France, Germany and Russia also comes at a time when the US is seeking help from these same countries for donor funding and debt forgiveness.
All three countries, which are owed billions of dollars by the former Saddam Hussein regime, are now likely to insist on debt repayments by the US-run administration in post-war Iraq.

Ever since the United Nations refused to sanction the US war on Iraq, the Bush administration has been graduating from one political blunder to another. As public opinion polls and political demonstrations outside the US indicate, there is growing resentment against the Bush administration in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

The resentment is not against the US per se but against an administration which is totally insensitive to the international community at large. Unfortunately, there are no indications that the situation will get any better in the foreseeable future.

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