This article is so stereotypical of how the United States government plays a role in development. The United States has committed to certain reconstruction projects and the Iraqi government is refusing to comply with them. It seems that there has been a failure to communicate between the Iraqi people and the US government. The US government almost seems hurt, that Iraq would not graciously accept their "help." One of the suggestions made in the article is that there should be a clear pre-agreement to reconstruction, this seems so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be addressed. The New York Times seems to be more concerned however that are tax dollars are being wasted. I personally see a problem with the United States rebuilding Iraq in an effort towards homogenization and modernization.
"The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects, such as power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq, citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the inspector generals office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative only months after the United States always intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were completed."
It is interesting to examine those who benefit from of all of the rebuilding projects, Halliburton, the US government, the US people? Corporations actually make more money being at war than they do not being at war.
Why doesn't the Iraqi people get the chance to decide how their country should be rebuilt?
1 comment:
I agree with you that the Iraqi people need to decide what they want for their country, not the US. And I also agree that the corporations are making more money by being at war than not. That is a very sad thing.
When we are talking about the difference between measuring development in GDP versus the HDI index, it reminds me of corporations, for whom the bottom line is money (kind of like GDP), and not the welfare of people (be they the wage laborers who work for the corporation, or the people who are taking part in the war, or the environment, etc.). I wish that corporations had another bottom line they had to subscribe to - the people, rather than the profits.
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