By Bob Maschi
peaceandfreedom.org
Excerpt posted to IPR by Paulie:

Neocons, neo-fascists and other neo-nut conservatives are desperately attempting to rewrite the history of the (latest) Iraq War. In mid December of 2008, a draft report of the ‘official’ history of the war began circulating. Its premise being that the war and the rebuilding of Iraq failed because of bureaucracy and poor planning by the Pentagon and Bush administration. But all this soul-searching is a smoke screen – fingers snapping in one hand to conceal the ‘magic’ taking place in the other. In reality, the Iraq War was not simply a failure of imperialism (in general) or the Bush administration (specifically) or of the Pentagon (even more specifically). It was a failure of free market capitalism.

For years, two versions of the Iraq War have dominated political discussion. One, held by many on the left, is that the war was a mistake in the first place and doomed to fail. The other is that the war was a brilliant success but the lack of a post-war plan for Iraq led to chaos – which the ‘surge’ largely corrected. Barack Obama, the new centrist president, carefully straddles these two versions by first claiming to have opposed the war from the beginning and then offering a “plan” to end the war (eventually) while continuing (indefinitely ) many aspects of the occupation.

Limiting the debate to these two versions is disingenuous and supported by the bastions of “free-enterprise” America: the media and the two major political parties (while the Democratic leadership may not have begun the war, they surely enabled it, and so they have as much to gain in the rewriting of its history as Republicans). This diversion is sinisterly Rovian in its use and brilliantly deceptive in its design, for there absolutely was a plan for post-invasion Iraq. And that plan proved to be a ridiculous fantasy of free-market thought.

THE PLAN:

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