smooth

Now that I've explained the theoretical underpinnings for the argument, I'll explain how people like me and Strange Famous get from that to an assertion of stealing one's resources:

You all know the basic premise of capitalism: money purchases capital (the means of production; the things, such as, oil, oil rigs, oil refineries, oil transport ships, etc., that make more money).

I assume readers are aware that our government made Iraq available to private investment. This compies with our stated goal of capitalism and democracy (these aren't necessarily linked, BTW, to say so is to engage in a process sociologists identify as reification--I might address that in a third post if people are interested).

When Iraq resources opened to the market, however, it went up on the global auction block. The people with the most money bought what they wanted. You can deduce yourself how much the average Iraqi citizen, pulling in just over a mean annual of $20 bucks, was able to purchase when he or she was bidding against the like of Chase Manhattan or CitiCorp (hint: billions of liquid capital). Most of these are US corporations, but it's not limited to our corps. In fact, such corporations are actually multi-national, and hardly conform to what we used to envision as being accountable to any one nation-state or its regulations.

This investment can be likened to a tidal wave. Worse to the local economy, however, is prospect money. Billions of dollars of investment capital that is pushed in and out in daily waves on Wall Street. You can imagine what kinds of things occur when the local economy is struggling on pennies per day and someone steps in with millions of dollars. Now, good things can happen. Jobs can be created, companies can spawn, and the pie can get larger--everyone gets something, even if it turns out to be crumbs.

However, the market isn't run by people. It's run by corporations and dollar signs on a ticker. This is a very important dynamic. I'm not accusing people of being sinister, but we ought to recognize that many investment opportunities do not care about the social or personal ramifications of their actions--and they shouldn't. They shouldn't in terms of being responsible to their shareholders or in how capitalism works.

This is the argument that we make in opposition to capitalism structures, BTW. Unless corporations make it part of their mission and agree be socially conscious, or they are forced to by an outside entity, the won't be socially conscious and, in fact, would be suicidal to ensure their policies were socially responsible when their competition doesn't agree to the same terms.

The bottom line for some of us:
This is not a war against Iraq waged by Americans--although that's what it's being billed as along with the ideology being constructed to justify it.

The people in control are simply changing the guard. Elites in Washington have ousted elites in Iraq, whom they helped secure in power because he did share their interests, moreso than either of them share with the working people in both of their respective nations.

This is the critical point that me or Strange Famous, among others, would make:

Bush, among other elites--I count Kerry and Heinz among them, is more interested in profit than he is about the welfare of his constituents--just like Saddam was. If you look at the leading heads of states, with few exceptions, you will find that they are comprised of people who come from the wealthiest class of society. They share more in common with each other than they do with any of us.

These people will continue to use people like you and me to fight their wars, to secure their means of production, to give them labor, and to give them whatever we make for that labor to purchase commodities--some of which we need and some of it to make us feel happy. We will continue to die for, and/or while making, other people's riches while the occasional few of us will rise to the top through some mechanism not usually due to our own actions.

Marx argued that buying commodities to make us feel happy was due to the effects of capitalism. In short, we don't need commodities, but our warped human nature (from the economic structure) leads us to believe we do. And it leads us to believe that there is no other way to interact with one another by pointing to our human nature and claiming that this is the normal way in which people behave--that capitalism keeps people in check.

The stealing part is that the Iraqi people should have been given their own resources to do what they want with them. Or, if we are so ideologically opposed to socialism or human capacity to help one another when given the opportunity (I'm speaking about the valid fear of corrupt people in Iraq fucking over their fellow citizens, not US oil tycoons), we should have at least held all resources in a trust fund until the Iraqi people and government had a handle on the turmoil in their country. To us, it isn't realistic to believe that the Iraqi citizen could compete with multi-billion dollar investment corporations when their nation's resources went up on the auction block. Now the Iraqi people might get jobs, but they will never own their own resources. And everyone here knows that the bus owner makes more each hour than the bus driver.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman