War profiteering is a lucrative global business. Hired for reconstructing a
war-torn nation under the disguise of "democracy building", private
companies with massive engineering and supplies contracts more often
ended up also as subcontractors running government services.
In fact, the White House established the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization
on August 5, 2004 for the very purpose of conducting reconstruction
business. Working in conjunction with the National Intelligence Council,
the office is headed by Carlos Pascual who assembles rapid-response
teams consisting of private firms, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
and members of think tanks. According to Pascual, its mandate is to
prepare "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that fall
under the "high risk" conflict category and to coordinate simultaneously
three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries for
five to seven years. The US can now plot a "pre-emptive" reconstruction
design before a "pre-emptive" deconstruction attack on a nation, as a
way to remold a destitute nation into a "democratic and market-oriented"
puppet state in step with the US spread of imperialism.
It's not surprising
corporate CEOs have played a key role in raising campaign funds to keep
the Republican Party in control of the political establishment. They
have fully supported a neocon government that shares their dream of
exploitation. While companies related to defense military productions
and operations are driven by pure greed with the sole aim of making
astronomical profits, the Bush administration is fixated with global
power as the US embarks on a rampage to grab world natural resources. As
a result, the defense contractors, subcontractors and oil conglomerates
have relied on the US for its military war machine to conquer and
destroy more defenseless nations in a perpetual march to world
domination.
As the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq have played out in the last few years and more
recently in Lebanon, the strategy of success for the Bush administration
has finally been exposed. In an ominous cycle, two dangerous forces
come into play — greed and power. The neocon government’s obsession to
seek world power feeds on the companies’ greed of making increasing
profits — both working off each other indeed strike a devastating blow
to civilizations. In essence, the Bush administration and its CEO
supporters depend on one another to achieve their demented goals.
Sadly, humanity is the casualty of their wanton warpath to world destruction.
On the domestic front,
the victims are the majority of US taxpayers who have been too mired
in their personal job insecurities and worries to suspect that their government has become a shadowy resemblance of a fascist state, similar to Mussolini’s dictatorship in the 1930s.
The myopic Americans
still believe that democracy will prevail in the coming November
elections, even though the results of all the elections since 2000 have
been under suspicion of being rigged in favor of the Republican Party.
Despite all the evidence of the US Constitution under attack by the Bush
administration, the moribund Congress, unfulfilling its roles as the
legislative branch, not only has observed in silence but also hastened
the death of democracy by its approval of eliminating personal privacy
through the US Patriot Act, allowing torture against the standards of
Geneva Conventions, levying a hefty tax burden on the citizens while
providing tax breaks for businesses, and worse still, increasing defense
budgets to continue illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On the international
front, the victims have been the hundred thousands of innocents who died
or suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention that war disasters
have left whole populations living in desperate and deplorable
conditions. Furthermore, the US government was in complete complicity
and support of the genocidal actions of Israel against the people of
Palestine and Lebanon. Moreover, in other parts of the globe, ordinary
people are now facing fear of escalating terrorist attacks fueled by the
Bush administration hostile stance against Islam and its illusory "war
on terror".
Since March 2003, the
Pentagon has been doling out big budgets to US defense contractors. As a
result, these companies have posted huge jumps in total shareholder
returns as well as substantial profits in the pockets of their CEOs.
It has also been noted that private defense contractors employ former
generals and former admirals from the U.S. military establishment.
The euphemism
"humanitarian assistance" is nothing more than a cover for global
corporations to exploit war-ravaged countries' resources while in the
process of making a killing. Meanwhile, the US reduces those countries
to a state of total economic, political and security dependence on the
Occupation Forces for survival.
Instead of "winning
hearts and minds" through reconstruction to meet the needs of the
Afghanistan and Iraq civilians, the war profiteers have gained an ill
reputation for incompetence, corruption and fraud. Complaints range from
shoddy work, slow progress, if any at all, and hiring foreign workers
over locals who were denied training and decision-making. The
reconstruction efforts have been plagued by widespread abuse — billions
of dollars disappeared through suspected fraud and price gouging by
contractors. Earlier this year, the Pentagon finally cancelled one of
its larger defense contracts in Iraq with the infamous Halliburton which was sponsored by Cheney. The bungled reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan fared even worse, according to Corp Watch.
Interestingly, after
the barbaric demolition of Lebanon by Israel, the US without wasting too
much time is sending in the reconstruction crew. President Bush met
with "four executives of leading US companies for the creation of the U.S.-Lebanon Partnership Fund" to provide much needed resources to assist in the reconstruction effort in Lebanon.
Sounding the alarm, C. G. Estabrook in his article "Is Humanitarian Interventionism Humane?" pointed
out that Wesley Clark in November 2001 had a conversation with a
Pentagon senior military staff officer who claimed that the US five-year
war campaign plan includes seven nations: Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Somali,
Iran, Syria and Libya. Coincidentally, six out of seven of these
countries mentioned by the military officer are in political turmoil and
some are engaged or about to engage in warfare. To sum up: Iraq was
invaded by US in 2003; Lebanon was demolished by Israel in August 2006;
Sudan is now under military siege; Somali is reported to have a rebel
war; and the US has launched imminent threats against Iran and Syria.
The only one that has not been targeted by the US administration
recently in the news is Libya. Interestingly enough, Sudanese refugees
claimed that the rebels who once protected them are now attacking them
only after they brokered a deal with the US and UK.
In April 2004, Bush
addressed the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference: "We are in a long
war. The war on terror is not going to end immediately." Obviously, he
didn’t mean it was just a long war in Iraq, but a series of wars against
nations on his secret hit list for reconstruction. Of course, only time
will reveal the truth ... but by then, it’d be too late.
(First published on UniOrb.com, October 2, 2006