When the White House tries to portray its Iraq conquest as a victory for freedom and justice in the world, peace activists have a more specific job: to challenge the rosy story line, to expose the lies, and to highlight the true costs of neoconservatism. Already, we have made considerable strides in this direction, forcing the administration into what The New York Times describes as a "slow retreat... a day-by-day, fact-by-fact backing away from assertions they made with such confidence nine months ago."

Writer Naomi Klein, among others, is now forcefully arguing that the privatization of Iraq's economy will be a vital front in this effort. As each of the leading justifications for war--first the weapons of mass destruction, then the links with al Qaeda--has fallen away, Bush has increasingly been forced to fall back on humanitarian reasoning. His apologists now frame the war as an effort to promote democracy. It will be incumbent upon peace activists, drawing on a wider analysis of global injustices, to raise questions about what version of "freedom" the White House is actually offering.

After all, what kind of democracy is the Bush administration promoting when the occupying authority has already sold away the Iraqi economy--where virtually everything is newly privatized, where there are no limits on the controlling interests of foreign corporations, where profits are expatriated, and where pre-arranged Structural Adjustment programs put handcuffs on national policymakers? Freedom for a well-connected corps of multinational profiteers and true self-determination for the Iraqi people are two very distinct things. It's the job of the peace movement to publicize the difference in a way that can resonate with a large portion of the American electorate.

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