Child malnutrition doubles in Iraq. posted by Richard Seymour

To 100,000 dead Iraqis, add an extra 200,000 starving children as part of the cost of this war. Malnutrition in Iraq which, amazingly under the circumstances, was declining in the years before the war, shot up in the year after the invasion. In that year, 400,000 Iraqi children are said to have suffered from a condition known as 'wasting', which is characterised by chronic diarrhoea and protein deficiencies.

This is almost certainly related to the conditions of war, but the other factor is that Iraq is being subjected to economic 'shock therapy' which is, according to Joseph Stiglitz, even more extreme than that which was perpetrated on Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By widespread consent, these policies have been a disastrous failure causing, as Stiglitz argues, many to see "their incomes plunge, and poverty soar".

Just as this cataclysm of creative destruction whipping through Russia created some sneaking longing for the old regime, one or two Iraqis are beginning to speak of how nice it was under Saddam, as the Washington Post reports:

"During the previous regime, I used to work on the government projects. Now there are no projects".

...

"Believe me, we thought a magic thing would happen" with the fall of Hussein and the start of the U.S.-led occupation, said an administrator at Baghdad's Central Teaching Hospital for Pediatrics. "So we're surprised that nothing has been done. And people talk now about how the days of Saddam were very nice," the official said.

Well, noone but about 3% of Iraqis would genuinely want the old regime back. But just as in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet bloc, noone was ever given the choice as to what they did want. And at least the latter was a revolution driven in large part by popular struggle. In this 'revolution from above' (shades of Hungary, Czechoslovakia etc), there was never even the potential for Iraqis to be able to impact the outcome except by resisting the 'revolutionaries'. This is exactly what the fellow-travellers of Empire, mimicking a past generation of fellow-travellers, refuse to accept.