No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

Halliburton and Iraq

I have seen a lot written that blames the Iraq fiasco on Haliburton and the greed of the Bush administration and its’ business allies. Frankly, I have a real difficulty with that view.

Halliburton was not the reason for the war, nor was it the cause of the post-war failures. Halliburton was small potatoes in the motivation to do the Iraq post-war stuff the way it was done.

Instead, the Administration really saw themselves as worthy successors to the Americans who deNazified Germany and left that nation a democracy. They also had this view that everyone in the world wants what Americans have, and the problem is the local government. Remove the local government and the population will snap to the American model of democracy together with laissez faire economics.

The result of this was a really quixotic effort to disband the military and police, deBaathify Iraq, and parcel out the state-run economic entities to private owners. Halliburton was a small element in this move.

Halliburton also fitted into the effort to outsource the non-military aspects of the occupation and leave only the military portions of the job to the uniformed forces.

They also bought into the fantasies spun by Amhed Chalabi, and tried to install him as the new leader of the free, democratic and economically successful Iraq.

Unfortunately, buying into the fantasies spun by Chalabi and the equally inaccurate fantasies about how everyone wants to become Americans led them to fail to properly plan for the post-war occupation and security. Chalabi is an untrustworthy con man, as his history established if the Neocons did not ignore it, and the switch from a command economy to one that is run on extreme free-market principles was never well thought out and has never run smoothly any time it has been tried.

Then the Administration was unprepared for the complex internal problems that have made Iraq difficult to govern since its creation by the British, and they were thoroughly unprepared to deal with the Nationalism they faced.

Finally, the Bush administration people is made up largely of people who do not see any reason for government to exist. They have a significant Libertarian view in which reasonable people agree to accept minimal government, rather than have to have it enforced on them. As a result, they were unprepared for the problems of providing security.

The fiasco in Iraq was not based on greed. There was really a large plan that, if it had worked, might have left Iraq as a land of peace and promise. But the large plan was simply another utopia spun by impractical men.

A small part of the utopia is based on the idea that greed is useful, and that the economic system could harness that greed for good. So greed was and is an acceptable motivator within that system, and not to be done away with. It's a damned shame the utopia is, like all utopias (including the Communist one), quite unworkable.

It was really a nice dream. But now it is reality that is coming to face them. The bill has come due. Next month we Americans will be able to chalk up the 1000th US military casualty in Iraq as partial payment for chasing that utopia the way we did.