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Sunday, August 12, 2007

Dispatches from Libertopia: Yet Another Iraq Edition

When the Incomprehensible Becomes Conventional Wisdom Expect A World of Hurt

Atrios calls our attention to this flabbergasting Reuters story, which exposes but also excuses as perfectly "understandable" and as a simple "mistake" (oops!) the utter obvious predictably catastrophic idiocy of the market fundamentalist faith "that a free market would rapidly emerge to replace… Saddam's [regime] and create full employment."
Years of economic policy mistakes after the fall of Saddam Hussein left unemployed young Iraqis easy targets for recruitment by al Qaeda and other insurgents, a U.S. Defense Department official said on Sunday…. [E]arly economic planners had made the understandable mistake of assuming that a free market would rapidly emerge to replace what he described as Saddam's "kleptocracy", and create full employment…. This mistaken assumption led to a series of decisions which "sowed the seeds of economic malaise and fuelled insurgent sympathies" after industrial production collapsed and imports flooded in to replace locally made goods.

I especially like this part: "This mistaken assumption led to a series of decisions which 'sowed the seeds of economic malaise and fuelled insurgent sympathies.'" Ya think? Who could have foreseen it?

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