It's the Economy, Stupid

Michael Schwartz writes in Asia Times Online that BushCheney's messianic free market economic policies are the primary cause for the Iraqi insurgency, not as is commonly discussed, the poor post invasion planning. He describes a downward cycle of economic immiseration, resistance, repression and more resistance that gave an initially small insurgency substantial credibility.

...By focusing attention only on the lack of US (and Iraqi) military power brought to bear in the early days after the fall of Baghdad,...[the press] ignore[s] some of the deeper reasons why many Iraqis were willing to confront a formidable military machine with only small arms and their own wits. They ignore - and cause the American public to ignore - the fact that there was little resistance just after the fall of Baghdad and that it expanded as the economy declined and repression set in. They ignore the eternal verity that the willingness to fight and die is regularly animated by the conviction that otherwise things will only get worse. (emphasis added)