Disaster Capitalism

Why do we refer to Richard Perle merely as an ideologue -- rather than an arms dealer with an impressive vocabulary?
-Naomi Klein

The HuffPost has a great video and transcript of John Cusack interviewing Naomi Klein about her new book The Shock Doctrine.

Klein explains to Lloyd how people with more connections than scruples use the chaos of disasters as a way to push for government policies that, under normal conditions, would be anathema to the American people. The two examples she gives are privatization in New-New Orleans and, of course, the half trillion dollars that has been lifted out of our pockets to blowup and rebuild Iraq.




In the transcript of their further discussion she details how companies that have made windfall profits from war contracts directly or indirectly paid public figures to push for the invasion of Iraq after 9/11. She mentions Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and others, but my favorite is her above description of how the media mischaracterizes Richard Perle. In fairness, he is very articulate for someone so totally shameless.

I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush.

-Perle, 2003


Klein and Cusack's brief discussion drives home the point that the Iraq War is not the disaster for which most Americans see it, but actually a huge success - for certain people. Defense contractors and oil companies have made an unprecedented killing.