A Catholic Soldier Looks at Capitalism and Iraq

Catholic Soldier who is over in Iraq has a good post here at Capitalism and Iraq .

It is good to see development in this area. A few years back there was a solider from Memphis that was working with local citizens in an Iraqi agricultural region to get the economy going. He mentioned that the fact that Iraq was a place where Baghdad controlled everything was a cultural and political obstacle they were working hard to overcome.

For instance in the Saddam if a a main water pump broke in the past they would call Baghdad. In many cases Baghdad never got back to them and the pump just remained broken. This was repeated all the time. Getting people over this previous mindset was a must. I am glad to see their has been progress

The article I am referencing is from 2005 and is located here. See Soldier builds entrepreneurial incubator during tour in Iraq.

He are some parts:

The National Guard is part of state government, so Culbreath's first step was to turn to Eric Cromwell at the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. Cromwell turned to Lisa Robins, the director of Research and Strategic Planning at ECD, whose personal passion is economic development in Third World countries.
Her challenge was to help Culbreath explain the concept of being an entrepreneur to people who have lived their entire lives in a command economy. Iraqi farmers always received their seed and fertilizer from the central government, which was also the buyer of last resort. Local government was funded entirely by oil revenue doled out by Baghdad.
"People who live in Western society will approach capitalism in the same way that we do, but when you get into a country that's never had that, their entire cultural framework is going to flavor what you do," Robins says. "You can't tell them that their thinking is wrong; you have to work within that."
Iraq is a cultural caste system in which people are born to their place in life. Along with basic explanations of capitalism, Robins also provided material on using local examples. ...........

At first, people understood the local problems as being unreliable electric service, the water supply and poor education, but they were at a loss for solutions. The town had been waiting eight years for someone from the central government to change the city water filter, which is supposed to happen annually.
"They were calling Baghdad, but Baghdad wasn't calling back," Culbreath says. "It was hard at first to grasp the idea that these are local issues and require local solutions."