Press Action ::: Eye on the Prize

Monday, March 29, 2004

Eye on the Prize

Transnational Corporations in the Middle East

By Abu Spinoza

It is sometimes amazing to read the self-delusional and hypocritical statements of certain CEOs of transnational corporations and their sycophants (consultants, academics, journalists, and spiritual gurus). One good example of the thinking of some self-styled “world-class thought leaders” of a few global transnational corporations on the Anglo-American strategy of occupation and looting of Iraq appears in “The Proceeding of the Vancouver CEO Retreat” [pdf] (June 2003) held by A.T. Kearney, a management consulting subsidiary of EDS. It states:

America’s Grand Middle East Project

The shock of 9/11 put the United States on the path to an ambitious but risky project to boost its security by modernizing and democratizing the Middle East. Seeing the entire region as the product of a failed civilization, the Bush administration has developed a grand strategy of that is less about regime change in individual countries than about civilization change — with stable economies, a strong middle class, human rights and political freedom as goals. Iraq and Palestine are only the beginning.

Though not yet fully explained to the American public or the world at large, this vision is bold and idealistic. It is driven by a small handful of neo-conservative thinkers, whose influence comes from the lack of coherent policy alternatives among liberals and moderates. But the vision is also dangerous, because it requires the kind of staying power that US administrations have rarely shown in the past. Can the impatient, ‘microwave culture’ of the United States — one in which pundits saw the Iraq conflict ‘grinding on’ after three days — effectively bring about millennium changes? And with re-election concerns paramount, will Bush have the patience to develop a bipartisan consensus and see his policies through?

In the United States, there indeed is very much “a bipartisan consensus” for the continuation of the worst aspects of Bush administration policies under either wing of the two-party system of capitalist democracy. But the sanctimonious talk of “stable economies, a strong middle class, human rights and political freedom as goals” in the Middle East at a time when U.S. authorities are directly responsible for killing more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians and financing the Israeli occupation of Palestine requires an impressive degree of chutzpah, hypocrisy and general dishonesty, skills that many corporate leaders have perfected in schemes of corporate malfeasance, tax avoidance and evasion, lobbying and corruption, and financial shenanigans.

Indeed, for “a small handful of neo-conservative thinkers” and their corporate allies, no doubt “Iraq and Palestine are only the beginning.” These ventures will continue unless the population of the Middle East, in solidarity with the progressive people of the Western democracies, are able to stop them. No wonder the corporate sponsors of neo-imperialism lament that projects of domination and conquest require “the kind of staying power that U.S. administrations have rarely shown in the past,” thanks no doubt to the anti-war mass movements and organizations and other truly civilizing social changes that have taken place, including concern for human rights.

The role of corporate profiteers who have exploited sanctions and war needs to fully be exposed. The corporate and intellectual accessories of the neo-conservatives must be held accountable for their transgressions. There is nothing inevitable about the success of the robber baron CEOs and “America’s Grand Middle East Project.”

The fierce and heroic resistance movements show that the people of the Middle East fully reject designs for land-grabbing, occupation, resource marauding, and mind-control through propaganda. It is up to the people of the world to resist the axis of governments, corporations, and their minders whose sole goal is to despoil the earth and its inhabitants, in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Abu Spinoza is a columnist for Press Action.

More from Abu Spinoza