Privatization on Trial
Paul Krugman wonders what damage our economic policies have done in Iraq, including--and finally someone is talking about this--privatization of military functions out to civilian personnel accountable to nobody.

"Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization — dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities — undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy.
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Indeed, over the past year the Coalition Provisional Authority has slashed tariffs, flattened taxes and thrown Iraqi industry wide open to foreign investors — reinforcing the sense of many Iraqis that we came as occupiers, not liberators.
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What's truly shocking in Iraq, however, is the privatization of purely military functions.

For more than a decade, many noncritical jobs formerly done by soldiers have been handed to private contractors. When four Blackwater employees were killed and mutilated in Falluja, however, marking the start of a wider insurgency, it became clear that in Iraq the U.S. has extended privatization to core military functions. It's one thing to have civilians drive trucks and serve food; it's quite different to employ them as personal bodyguards to U.S. officials, as guards for U.S. government installations and — the latest revelation — as interrogators in Iraqi prisons."

I'm terribly jealous of his ability to tie things together. It is not only incompetent government heads and Presidential advisors to blame in the current mess. Conservative economic ideology, which as Krugman points out, would never have been employed by any Democratically elected leaders in Iraq, has had its way in the war-torn state, and is on display for the world to see. I hope this NYT column, which is worth a read in total, helps open the debate about privatizing military functions to wider press scrutiny.