The use of private
military contractors by the government can be hard to justify – critics have said
they
have been unaccountable, have a tendency to adopt reckless tactics,
are costly,
and provide politicians with a means to avoid the democratic
process when it comes to wartime policy. True, armed
contractors have been largely successful in protecting diplomats, but
those same diplomats they've been hired to protect have had tougher
jobs thanks to their erratic behavior. After all, it's not like the
government is incapable of providing security either. But because of
the deep extent to which the government relies on private security
contractors, it is unlikely they will be going away anytime soon.
Since the first
Persian Gulf War, the
number of private contractors hired by the Department of Defense has
ballooned like John Madden at an Outback Steakhouse from about 9,200 to 148,050. Although
the first Gulf War was far more brief and the strategy for it much
less ambitious, the more than ten-fold increase in private
contractors reflects a trend in Washington: privatization of the most
fundamental of government services, and as much of it as possible.
R.J. Hillhouse, author and expert on espionage, quipped that the President's Daily Brief “would
look more like NASCAR with corporate logos plastered all over it” if it advertised the length to which intelligence gathering has been outsourced to private companies such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and SAIC - the very same companies that stand to benefit financially from active war.
It is difficult to say exactly what effect these defense contractors have had
on the political process, but if pre-war Iraqi intelligence is any indication, it
doesn't bode well for America that groups who are more responsible to
their shareholders than the American public are heavily involved in
influencing decisions about national security.
Despite
the integral role contractors now play in the National Defense
set-up, from backrooms to the front lines, President Obama has made
clear his intentions to limit
the prominent role of the private sector
at the Pentagon. He has started by replacing
some defense contractors with civil servants,
but so far the focus seems to be on contractors who provide more of
the mundane services to soldiers, such as potato peeling and laundry,
while leaving the most influential private companies untouched.
Replacing 10,000 “acquisitions” contractors with career defense
personnel appears to be a step towards sensibility, however.
But
when it comes to questioning the role of private companies in
national defense, the scope of the debate is limited. Private
security contractors are still fighting for profit in
combat zones, where the behavior of Americans is most heavily
scrutinized. The curtailing of private companies in intelligence
gathering seems to be limited to their operating of murky prisons
around the globe. Despite then-Senator Hilary Clinton vowing to ban
the use of private military contractors by the State Department if
elected President, as Secretary of State, she has made no fuss over
their use, and even quietly signed off on the switch from Blackwater to Triple Canopy.
Does the Obama Administration have more important issues on its
plate, or is this merely a classic case of politicians making empty
promises?
Considering
the high number of contractors working in Iraq, the real reason that
the Obama Administration is not replacing them outright is, like a
fat kid addicted to junk food, our
government is dependent on corporations.
The 8,701 private security contractors operating in Iraq currently
are providing a specialized service: the protection of diplomats and
other VIPs and the security of the Green Zone in Baghdad. These guns
for hire cannot easily be replaced by American soldiers, who are
needed by commanders elsewhere.
The
most viable replacement for armed contractors would be the Diplomatic
Security Services (DSS), the law enforcement hand of the security arm of
the State Department, that has been used in the past to perform the
same tasks that armed contractors now do. But with only 1,450
trained security guards on the books at the State Department in 2008,
and only thirty-six in Iraq, throwing the DSS into Iraq would be a
baptism by fire and IEDs. This is a risk that no politician appears
willing to take. Thus the government is stuck with private security
providers who, by definition, are more concerned with the opinion of
their shareholders than with public opinion.
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