Here\u2019s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn\u2019t Cairo after all. Maybe it\u2019s Baghdad \u2014 specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.<\/p>\n
As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular \u2014 in a bad way. Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war, those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision. Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy, told a Washington Post reporter that one of his top priorities was to \u201ccorporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises\u201d \u2014 Mr. Bremer\u2019s words, not the reporter\u2019s \u2014 and to \u201cwean people from the idea the state supports everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein\u2019s best-selling book \u201cThe Shock Doctrine,\u201d which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society. <\/p>\n