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Bush unveils plans for US colonial office

By Bill Van Auken

21 May 2005

The US government is creating a permanent agency

tasked with the rapid consolidation of US control in

countries targeted by Washington for military

aggression. That was President George W. Bush’s

essential message in a speech delivered Wednesday to a

Republican audience in Washington

.

He announced that his administration is proposing $100

million in funding in next year’s budget for a new

“conflict response” fund and $24 million for a new

Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization within the

State Department. This office is to include an “Active

Response Corps” made up of government foreign affairs

specialists, as well as private consultants and

contractors.

 

Bush wrapped this new initiative in the mantle of

democracy. “We are seeing a rise of a new generation

whose hearts burn for freedom—and they will have it,”

he declared. What they will really have, however, and

what the US administration is preparing, is more war.

The president picked a sympathetic audience for

unveiling his plan: the International Republican

Institute, a constituent part of the National

Endowment for Democracy. The NED was created more than

20 years ago to use the Republican Party, the

Democrats, big business and the AFL-CIO labor

bureaucracy as conduits for funding that previously

was provided covertly by the CIA to destabilize

foreign governments or promote US-backed movements.

The title of the new agency, “Reconstruction and

Stabilization,” obviously presupposes acts of

destruction and destabilization, which are to be

carried out by its counterparts in the Pentagon and

American intelligence.

It should be pointed out that the annual funding for

the global operations of this new supposedly

altruistic US effort—$124 million—is barely

one-seventieth of the amount contained in the latest

“emergency” appropriations for the continuing military

operations in Iraq and Afghanistan

.
 

Bush claimed that the impetus for the new agency—with

its ability to dispatch civilian occupation teams

anywhere in the world—came from the experience of the

US
 invasion of 

Iraq

.

“You know, one of the lessons we learned from our

experience in 

Iraq

 is that while military personnel

can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the world, the

same is not true of US government civilians,” Bush

said. He praised US officials for doing an “amazing

job under extremely difficult and dangerous

circumstances,” while adding, “But the process of

recruiting and staffing the Coalition Provisional

Authority was lengthy, and it was difficult.”

This is all lies and distortions. The essential

problems confronting the 

US

 occupation authority in

Iraq

 stemmed not from the lack of a “rapid response

corps,” but rather from the resistance of the Iraqi

people and the criminality of the entire enterprise.

Those who staffed the Coalition Provisional Authority

were selected not for any expertise—knowledge of the

region, fluency in Arabic and government experience

were viewed with suspicion by the Bush

administration—but for their unconditional loyalty to

the president.

Many of the young know-nothings given positions of

authority in Iraqi ministries were recruited by using

résumés sent to the right-wing think tank, the

Heritage Foundation. The fledgling Iraqi security

forces were placed under the nominal tutelage of

Bernard Kerik, the ex-bodyguard and scandal-plagued

former police commissioner of 

New York City

.

The overriding objective in 

Iraq

 was neither

“reconstruction” nor “stabilization,” but the looting

of the country’s economy and the establishment of firm

US control over its strategic oil reserves.

This was to be carried out through the privatization

of 

Iraq

’s economic enterprises, services and, above

all, a decisive share of its oil sector. The

catastrophic deterioration of all major social indices

cited in the recent report issued by the United

Nations Development Programme (See “UN report finds US

war in 

Iraq

 yields a social ‘tragedy’”) exposes the

abject failure of the 

US

 authorities to reconstruct

Iraq

’s war-shattered infrastructure. But they proved

adept in the looting and privatization departments.

Earlier this year, a special inspector general’s

report revealed that the 

US

 occupation authority was

unable to account for some $9 billion that was

supposedly spent on reconstruction.

In a report Friday citing interviews with former US

occupation officials and internal memos, the Los

Angeles Times focused on the month of June 2004, when

the Coalition Provisional Authority was formally

dissolved and a puppet Iraqi regime installed.

“June 2004 has emerged as a month when both money and

accountability were thrown out the window—something

like a Barney’s warehouse sale in the Wild West, with

the 

US

 playing the role of frenzied shopper and

leaving Iraqis to pay the bill,” the article states.

The Times reports that the authority issued over 1,000

contracts that month, double the normal monthly

amount. The money—wasted, embezzled and stolen—was

siphoned out of accounts made up of Iraqi oil revenues

and frozen assets of the Saddam Hussein regime. These

funds were transferred largely to US military

contractors, with some kickbacks going to corrupt

members of the Iraqi puppet government.

So egregious is the theft of Iraqi and US funding that

the government has found itself compelled to launch a

criminal investigation into suspected embezzlement by

US officials in connection with some $100 million of

the funds designated for reconstruction projects that

went missing.

Privatization has been secured, at least on paper. The

single undeniable achievement of the occupation

authority under US proconsul Paul Bremer was a

revision of the Iraqi legal code that, for the first

time anywhere in the Arab world, allows 100 percent

foreign ownership of Iraqi enterprises. Some 200

state-owned enterprises are now targeted for

privatization or liquidation by foreign capital,

resulting in the elimination of hundreds of thousands

of jobs.

Later this year, the Iraqi industry ministry is

expected to begin placing sections of heavy industry,

petrochemical plants, sugar refineries and other

enterprises on the auction block. The problem,

however, is that the 

US

 military’s inability to crush

resistance to the occupation has left few foreign

capitalists willing to invest in the country, no

matter how favorable the terms.

Essentially, Bush’s new Office of Reconstruction and

Stabilization (ORS) is designed to carry out this same

process in other targeted countries, but more

efficiently. By “stabilization,” the 

US

 government

means primarily the suppression of any resistance to

US

 domination. “Reconstruction,” on the other hand, is

a code word for the demolishing of all impediments to

the exploitation of the country’s resources by

American capitalism.

This was spelled out by Carlos Pascual, the former US

ambassador to 

Ukraine

 who has been tapped to head the

ORS, in a speech delivered last October.

“The very time that you’re stabilizing, you have to be

thinking about the next stage, which is in many cases

tearing apart the old,” Pascual told an audience

assembled by the Center for Strategic and

International Studies in 

Washington

. First on his list

“old” structures that must be “torn apart” were “the

state-owned enterprises that created a nonviable

economy.” He reiterated, “We have to confront those

issues and get into a process of tearing apart the old

if we are to unleash the forces for openness and

competition.”

Not surprisingly, the impetus for Bush’s new Office of

Reconstruction and Stabilization comes from the

Pentagon. The military believes it has paid a

significant price for the abject corruption and

criminality that pervades the Bush administration’s

handling of the Iraqi occupation. These traits have

helped cripple restoration of basic services, further

fueling Iraqi fury against US forces. The generals see

the need for a more professional setup not just in

Iraq

, but as an integral part of preparations for

further preemptive wars aimed at asserting 

US

 hegemony

in strategically important and resource-rich areas of

the globe.

In a report released last summer, the Pentagon’s

Defense Science Board counseled: “US military

expeditions to 
Afghanistan
 and 

Iraq

 are unlikely to be

the last such excursions. 

America

’s armed forces are

extremely capable of projecting force and achieving

conventional military victory. Yet success in

achieving US political goals involves not only

military success but also success in the stabilization

and reconstruction operations that follow

hostilities.”

The report, titled “Transition to and from

Hostilities,” continues: “For countries where the risk

of US intervention is high—termed ‘ripe and important’

in this report—the president or National Security

Council (NSC) would direct the initiation of a robust

planning process.”

According to published reports, the Pentagon and US

intelligence agencies have already drawn up a secret

watch-list of 25 such “ripe and important” countries.

The National Intelligence Council has been placed in

charge of reviewing this list every six months, while

the new Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization

together with the Pentagon would be responsible for

drawing up detailed plans for 

US

 invasion and

occupation.

The identities of the countries on the list remain

classified, but it is reported that they are heavily

concentrated in the key oil-producing regions of the

Middle East, the 
Caspian
 
Basin
 and 
West Africa
.

Whether such Latin American producers as 

Mexico

 and

Venezuela

 are also included is not known.

While providing advice on how to better prepare for

the 

US

 takeover of targeted countries, the Pentagon

study includes a cautionary note. It points out that,

with US forces already involved in such operations in

Iraq
, 

Afghanistan

 and, to a lesser degree, the

Balkans, and with the prospect for these deployments

continuing for years to come, military manpower is

stretched dangerously thin.

“History indicates that stabilization of societies

that are relatively ordered, without ambitious goals,

may require 5 troops per 1,000 indigenous people,” the

study states, “while stabilization of disordered

societies, with ambitious goals involving lasting

cultural change, may require 20 troops per 1,000

indigenous people. That need, with the cumulative

requirement to maintain human resources for three to

five overlapping stabilization operations as noted

above, presents a formidable challenge.”

Given the above mentioned ratio, the 

US

 should have

nearly four times as many troops as are presently

deployed in such a “disordered society” as 

Iraq

.

“Today, much of our focus is on the broader Middle

East,” Bush declared in his speech Wednesday, “because

I understand that 60 years of Western nations excusing

and accommodating the lack of freedom in that region

did nothing to make us safe.”

The choice of words is significant. Why 60 years? This

encompasses the life span of nominally independent

national states in most parts of the 
Middle East
.

Prior to the end of the Second World War, they were

run by British imperialism—and, to a lesser extent,

the other major European powers—as a collection of

mandates, protectorates and puppet states.

In its second term, the Bush administration has begun

to shift from justifying 

US

 militarism abroad in the

name of the global war on terrorism to that of a

supposed worldwide 

US

 crusade for “freedom” and

against “tyranny.”

He sounded this theme in his speech in 

Washington

,

declaring that his administration has a “forward

strategy of freedom in the 
Middle East
.” In reality,

what is involved here is a regressive drive to restore

colonial domination, this time by 

US

 imperialism. The

only “freedom” 

Washington

 is interested in promoting

is that of the 

US

 financial oligarchy to seize control

of wealth and markets anywhere in the world.

The real thinking of the Bush White House on this

project was spelled out by one of its favorite

columnists, Max Boot, in an opinion piece published

last month. “In order to be better prepared the next

time—and yes, there will be a next time—

Washington

must create a 

US

 government agency specifically tasked

with rebuilding war-torn lands,” Boot wrote.

“The 

United States

 needs its own version of the

British Colonial Office for the postimperial age.”

He continued, “The recent decision to set up an Office

of Reconstruction and Stabilization within the State

Department is a good start.”