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WORD COUNT
539
FEBRUARY 8, 2006
PAUL BREMER – NEW
CANAAN’S PONTIUS PILATE – by William A. Collins
Free discussion,
Is our fear;
No dissenters,
Wanted here.
Paul Bremer came to
New Canaan the other night to speak. It is, after all, his old hometown.
Thus, the visit was, first of all, a case of local boy makes good,
which, of course, a lot of New Canaanites do. It was also the tour
kickoff for Bremer’s new book, “My Year In Iraq.” His listeners well
understood book tours, and publishing, and publicity, and hype.
And colonialism.
You’ll recall that President Bush appointed Bremer as the first head of
the Coalition Provisional Authority, as soon as the military’s mission
in Iraq was “accomplished.” The Romans once called this job “proconsul,”
the appointed ruler of a conquered territory. Their most storied
incumbent was Pontius Pilate, though our grasp of his actual duties and
performance in Judea remain somewhat hazy.
Not so with Bremer’s.
His work was precisely laid out in Washington and he performed it with
quiet ferocity. His first task was to turn over Iraq’s traditional
publicly owned enterprises to foreign investors. He started with
electricity. (In California, this was analogous to deregulation.) Next
to go was the public water supply, and soon the telephone system. New
Canaan can identify with this sort of privatization.
Then came the banks,
followed shortly by the insurance companies, all quickly gobbled up by
outside money. Now even farmers are not allowed to plant their own
seeds, but must buy genetically modified models from Monsanto, Cargill,
or the like.
Tariffs, taxes and
corporate restrictions were also redrawn for the benefit of foreign
businesses and investors. And not only were these investor-friendly
rules imposed, they were written into Iraq’s Constitution. Perhaps you
wondered why Washington felt so obsessed with Iraq’s need for a
constitutional democracy. There’s more, and the oil industry comes next.
One doubts that
Pilate was so productive. Or the British governors of the American
colonies. This compares more with the Spanish rulers of Peru or Mexico,
or the British Raj in India.
Needless to say,
Bremer’s was the kind of performance that New Canaan could cheer, and
did. But there were complications. His talk was sponsored by the public
library, so there were overtones of free speech. At least until the
library detected that anti-war folks were planning to attend.
That changed
everything. Abruptly the venue was shifted to St. Luke’s private school
out in the four-acre zoning wilderness. Names of known protesters who
had signed up early disappeared from the approved attendance list. The
police blanketed the entrance to keep out dissidents while the Secret
Service patrolled inside. The town takes care of its own.
For those who live
outside the Gold Coast, you should know that lower Fairfield County is
not in fact a total monolith of greed. It only looks that way. Two weeks
after the Bremer incident, the Westport library hosted a talk by Victor
Navasky, editor of “The Nation” magazine. He basically opposes
everything Bremer stands for. No police or Secret Service were needed
for that one. And other libraries are also doing their best to undermine
the frighteningly intrusive rules of the Patriot Act. Thus it seems to
be the New Canaan library alone that stands out as a bulwark of
colonialism and avarice.
--
Columnist William A.
Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk,
Connecticut. -- A photo of William A. Collins is available
CLICK HERE
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