Woe-conomy

Michael Schwartz, a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, explains how the United States shattered the Iraqi economy, and how the insurgency is thriving in the rubble:

Certainly, an alien army entered Iraq, destroyed that country's sovereignty, and stoked nationalist resentments. But major media outlets in this country have lost track of the fact that what also entered Iraq was an American administration wedded at home and abroad to a fierce, unbending, and alien set of economic ideas. By focusing attention only on the lack of U.S. (and Iraqi) military power brought to bear in the early days after the fall of Baghdad, they ignore some of the deeper reasons why many Iraqis were willing to confront a formidable military machine with only small arms and their own wits. They ignore -- and cause the American public to ignore -- the fact that there was little resistance just after the fall of Baghdad and that it expanded as the economy declined and repression set in. They ignore the eternal verity that the willingness to fight and die is regularly animated by the conviction that otherwise things will only get worse.

Like many materialist analyses (see, Kapital, Das), this one elides some critical but immaterial issues, such as devotion to religious or political causes. But it's a good place to start burrowing out from inside either of the two ossifying presentations of what's going on in Iraq - the major media's or the White House's.

(Crossposted on After School Snack.)