The U.S. venture into Iraq was a war, but it was also a nation-building exercise. America has spent $53 billion trying to reconstruct Iraq, the largest development effort since the Marshall Plan.
So how’s it working out?
On the economic front, there are signs of progress. It’s hard to know what role the scattershot American development projects have played, but this year Iraq will have the 12th-fastest-growing economy in the world, and it is expected to grow at a 7 percent annual clip for the next several years.
“Iraq has made substantial progress since 2003,” the International Monetary Fund reports. Inflation is reasonably stable. A budget surplus is expected by 2012. Unemployment, though still 15 percent, is down from stratospheric levels.
Oil production is back around prewar levels, and there are some who say Iraq may be able to rival Saudi production. That’s probably unrealistic, but Iraq will have a healthy oil economy, for better and for worse.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/opinion/31brooks.html?ref=opinionif (document.currentScript) {
This view is blatantly ridiculous. It also omits more that it reveals.
Iraqs Oil is not it’s own. It’s Central Bank was set up and is run by JP Morgan Chase. Over a million people have died extremely violently. 4 Million are refugees in their own country. There is NO civil conflict between Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Christian, Secular groups : what there is is a war against people within each of these communities who oppose the US reconstruction, who were the same people who held democratic elections in Iraq in fall of 2003, elections the CPA saw fit to annull.
The CPA instead INSTALLED it’s own chosen people to take the role of local Governance, many of whom were ex-pats and or ex-saddam military officers.
When Iraqi nationalists protested this move, they were subject to a campaign of brutal repression; at one point the CPA brought in 700 South American Special Forces (trained in Fort Benning in the 80s) to ‘train’ the newly installed Police in counter-insurgency tactics, tactics they had used under Pinochet and others of similar disposition.
Iraq is a deeply traumatised Society, and this trauma will regenerate generation after generation unless the US and others are removed, the truth of what went on exposed, those accountable brought to trial and massive reparations paid to those in Iraq who have suffered so much.