Dying for What?

The Krug Man asks 'The Question' most troubling our nation. Following his logic leads to only one conclusion.


As Bechtel Goes
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Bechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq. Its mission — to rebuild power, water and sewage plants — wasn’t accomplished: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq’s population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money and having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last government contract.

As Bechtel goes, so goes the whole reconstruction effort. Whatever our leaders may say about their determination to stay the course complete the mission, when it comes to rebuilding Iraq they’ve already cut and run. The $21 billion allocated for reconstruction over the last three years has been spent, much of it on security rather than its intended purpose, and there’s no more money in the pipeline.

The failure of reconstruction in Iraq raises three questions. First, how much did that failure contribute to the overall failure of the war? Second, how was it that America, the great can-do nation, in this case couldn’t and didn’t? Finally, if we’ve given up on rebuilding Iraq, what are our troops dying for?

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Photo credit: Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

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Related:

• Bechtel calls it quits after more than 3 years in Iraq - Los Angeles Times

  Violence has left few of the company's infrastructure projects in the war-torn country operating as planned.

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