What do you think Trump's Afghanistan plan is ?

[WePurrsevere]

19. Privatization...

Republicans love privatize. The problem with that is that privatisation is about making money not necessarily doing the job correctly or ethically. Even with Bannon gone I suspect this is the plan and this is just the beginning of what they will try to screw up royally with their 'privatisation' BS.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2017-07-11/team-trump-wants-to-privatize-afghanistan-operations-and-so-much-more

The latest big scoop from The New York Times came this morning, when the paper broke the news that presidential advisers Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner met with private military contractors to offer an alternative to a troop surge in Afghanistan: a mercenary surge that could funnel billions of dollars into the contractors' pockets.

That the administration would have ties to Erik D. Prince, the founder of the notorious Blackwater firm, and Stephen Feinberg, of the military contractor DynCorp, should come as no surprise. That they would use policy to enrich their friends shouldn't either – it's standard operating procedure in this White House. But the bigger story here is that the move to shift Afghanistan operations from the military to contractors shows the full reach of the Trump administration's core philosophy: the privatization of everything.

The divisions between Trump and the conservative movement are well documented. On trade, on foreign policy, on social issues, there are wide and unbridgeable differences. But that framing has disguised the defining conservative philosophy at the heart of Trump's presidency: dismantling and privatizing public services.

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Military force falls into this category as well. Military contractors and mercenaries are nothing new, of course. Prince's Blackwater was active throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where in 2007 its employees shot 37 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad. Four employees were eventually convicted of the murders.

That Bannon and Kushner would pair with Prince to extend the privatization of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, especially in light of this history, shows how dedicated they are to the principle of privatization, and how little they care about its consequences.

More at link above.