You're Not in the Army Now. Should the Pentagon be in the business of outsourcing war?
Macomber, Shawn
"You're Not in the Army Now" Should the Pentagon be in the business of outsourcing war? BY SHAWN MACOMBER RITING ABOUT THE DANGERS OF DEPENDENCE ON MERCENARIES and auxiliary armies, Niccolo Machiavelli...
...To start one up all one needs is an export license from the State Department Office of Defense Transitions Assistance...
...The most recent example is the scandal at Abu Ghraib, where 16 of the 44 incidents of abuse were committed by private contractors...
...The latest government estimates suggest that a quarter of the reconstruction budget in Iraq—some $4 billion—will go to private corporations...
...The Pentagon has outsourced communication services at the Cheyenne mountain base from which the U.S...
...Approximately 30,000 private contractors are in Iraq, making them the second largest contingent in the Coalition of the Willing...
...Weiss openly admits to participating in freelance firefights and killing insurgents far outside the purview of any military operation...
...But there is little evidence that privatization of combat and security personnel will produce savings in the post-9/11 world...
...This is a paramilitary force...
...But Bosnian police officials didn't pursue it, saying the Dayton Peace Accords prevented them from taking action...
...But the military has yet to draw up procedural regulations to enforce the law, and no contractor has been prosecuted under it...
...Intelligence gathering and analysis are often done not by our military, but by corporations...
...Seventy percent of army aviation training has now been outsourced by the Pentagon...
...government almost a dollar per gallon for millions of gallons of gasoline and then another $16 million for food services in Kuwait...
...It's a shame...
...Chief Master Sargent Robert Martens, the senior enlisted advisor to Special Operations Command, recently testified that the loss of "mature, operationally experienced" soldiers at the current rate will soon create "an unacceptable level of operational risk," especially in light of "a heavy operations tempo, rising demands on the home front, and numerous opportunities within the civilian sector...
...military was aware of the battle, it was over...
...The missteps of private contractors can influence the events of war...
...In the aftermath of the Bosnia incident Congress passed the 2000 Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which technically means that anyone working overseas on a Pentagon contract is under U.S...
...During the summer corporate commandos fought off an attack on the Coalition Provisional Headquarters in Najaf for several hours with their own soldiers and helicopters...
...But as the story developed, the government had to acknowledge accepting prisoners from Idema...
...Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American Spectator...
...contractors worth an estimated $300 billion...
...Soldiers fight according to the rules of engagement, which in theory, are vetted to align with national level goals and strategies," Phillip Carter, a former U.S...
...It is also often possible to arrange for a [firm] to be paid by other parties or use off-budget funds...
...It remains unknown...
...DynCorp insists it did all it could in firing the employees...
...In 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004 a place like Iraq, a lot of attention is paid to the calibration of force, because too much or too little could result in disastrous consequences...
...More than 120 contractors have been killed, often while actively participating in combat—a higher casualty number than suffered by any U.S...
...It will be years before the troops come home and perhaps longer before the contractors follow...
...Same goes for Jonathan Idema, the self-professed contractor currently serving a ten-year sentence in Afghanistan for running a private prison...
...take this risk in the first place...
...While soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company face court martial for their crimes, legal analysts say it is unlikely civilian contractors will face similar consequences...
...rate soldiers are up to...
...His company's motto: "PROTECT THE WEAK, DEFEND THE INNOCENT, STRIKE DOWN THINE ENEMIES AND VANQUISH ALL EVIL BY THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD...
...The military often has no idea what these corpoNOVEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 27 YOU'RE NOT IN THE ARMY NOW The military often has no idea what these corporate soldiers are up to...
...While it has been reported ad infinitum that four civilian contractors were killed and mutilated in the city of Fallujah, the press has rarely pointed out that they were armed commandos from Blackwater working for a food company in Iraq...
...Congress only has authority over official policy, not over private entities...
...0 NE ARGUMENT FOR PRIVATIZING WAR is that it lowers the defense budget...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004...
...The basic training of an average special forces soldier can take up to four years, and it takes years more of field experience before that soldier is ready to command in a combat situation...
...By the time the U.S...
...In some cases the Pentagon is hiring these contractors in order to skirt restrictions passed by our elected representatives...
...jurisdiction...
...Despite Jones and Fay's misgivings about the propriety of using civilian interrogators in the wake of the scandal, the biggest contractor at Abu Ghraib, CACI International Inc., was recently awarded a $23 million extension...
...They cannot be classified as noncombatants under the Geneva Convention, because they shoot to kill...
...1 ITTLE OVERSIGHT EXISTS over these private firms...
...The same study shows that 14 of the top contractors also paid out political contributions of over $1 million to political candidates over the last decade, which didn't hurt their position either...
...Technically, private contractors can be tried by a military court "in [a] time of war," but there is little precedent for such a trial and the murkiness of what the acton in Iraq is officially classified as—war...
...Private military firms, originally a temporary panacea to address the "security gap" that resulted from the post-Cold War downsizing of the armed forces, have become a $100 billion a year industry...
...The Department of Defense claimed that outsourcing in the 1990s would save taxpayers $6 billion, a figure the GAO later reported was inflated by at least 75 percent...
...It remains one of the Pentagon's top contractors...
...After Congress imposed a limit of 400 military advisers in Colombia and 20,000 soldiers in Bosnia, for example, the Pentagon responded by hiring corporate paramilitary units...
...So the worst that happened to the pedophiles was that they lost their jobs and were put on a plane back to America...
...The Bosnians think we're all trash," Johnston told Insight Magazine...
...When I was there as a soldier they loved us, but DynCorp employees have changed how they think about us...
...That last bit is important, because these contractors are not held to the same rules and standards enshrined in the Uniform Code of Military Justice as U.S...
...If a foreign policy goal is important enough for war, then isn't it important the U.S...
...This is not a security company...
...But as Republican Congressman Jim Saxton, chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, recently noted in a hearing on this very subject, "the war on terror has no foreseeable end...
...For example, former Special Forces officer David Passaro is currently on trial for beating an Afghani to death with a flashlight during an interrogation session while working on a contract for the CIA...
...It is no surprise that contractors are asked for their business cards by soldiers at military checkpoints...
...The Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to them...
...A2BU GHRAIB IS NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT...
...To a large degree this is true...
...When Johnston originally reported the crimes to his superiors, they did nothing, and, in fact, one of these supervisors was later implicated in the scandal and fired after a video of him raping a woman surfaced...
...Saxton held the hearing because the Special Forces, arguably the most important weapon in the war on terror, "is losing very valuable senior personnel at a rate that cannot be replaced...
...Singer details several instances of related corporate inflation, such as an attempt by BRS to hire 116 people to service jobs on bases in Bosnia when the Army determined no more than 66 were actually needed...
...Clearly there are non-essential areas where privatization can safely serve as a boon to the Department of Defense...
...Nevertheless, a crisis of international proportions was sparked by a paramilitary group that had no obligation to keep the Defense Department abreast of its activities...
...All it takes to get a covert "special access project" underway is a declaration by the powers that be that "extremely sensitive activities" will advance foreign policy goals...
...Grover Norquist has suggested the Pentagon lawn could be mowed for less by private companies, and he is likely right...
...But why should the U.S...
...The government has barred any public disclosure of the details of his CIA work...
...Similarly, language interpretation may sound mundane, but two of the four contractors implicated in the Taguba report on the Abu Ghraib abuses were hired as interpreters or translators...
...BY SHAWN MACOMBER RITING ABOUT THE DANGERS OF DEPENDENCE ON MERCENARIES and auxiliary armies, Niccolo Machiavelli observed, "The short-sightedness in human nature will begin a policy that seems good at the outset but does not notice the poison that is underneath...
...Perhaps this explains why a 2003 GAO report did not list cost-effectiveness as a rationale for outsourcing major military operations...
...Hamid Karzai, one of the most important allies in the War on Terror, is guarded not by U.S...
...The corporations argue that market forces discourage excesses by their employees...
...troops, but by American corporate security guards...
...There are other loopholes as well: The contractors at Abu Ghraib cannot be prosecuted under the law because technically they are under contract with the Interior Department, not the Department of Defense...
...Then the government admitted that Idema participated in NATO raids in Kabul, and that high-ranking A crisis of international proportions was sparked by a paramilitary group that had no obligation to keep the Defense Department abreast of its activities...
...After that, the State Department is not allowed by law to make details of these contracts public, and the companies themselves can rebuff any request for information they like...
...Army officer, wrote recently in Slate...
...Enjoying salaries of upwards of $20,000 a month, these contractors are very willing...
...It was always the opinion and belief of wise men that nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power," he warned...
...response to nuclear attacks is coordinated...
...What exactly was Passaro contracted to do...
...Although U.S...
...Accenting this idea of a new, separate army, a Johnson City, Tennessee woman has created a special ribbon to honor contractors similar to the yellow ribbon used to honor U.S...
...Nor can they be classified lawful combatants, because they are outside a military chain of command...
...Private military contractors, on the other hand, do not fight according to the same rules of engagement as their military brethren, if they operate under any rules at all...
...Somewhere in the fog of the nether-world, Machiavelli watches with interest...
...In 000, at least seven employees of DynCorp the company that now provides security for Afghan president Harmid Karzai) working in Bosnia were alleged to have bought and sold "sex slaves" as SHAWN MACOMBER young as 12 years old...
...I tried to tell them that this is not how all Americans act, but it's hard to convince them when you see what they're seeing...
...But does it...
...In Iraq, Halliburton overcharged the U.S...
...In its aftermath support for the war at home and abroad waned...
...When it came to Idema's trial in an Afghan court, however, he was not allowed to show evidence of his connections to the Pentagon or cross-examine witnesses...
...Pentagon officials received faxes from him...
...The tri-color design—orange for safety, yellow for safe return, and black to honor fallen contractors—is a popular online product at $2 a pop...
...Not to mention, if the Army or Marine Corps does not retain soldiers, taxpayers have to pay to recruit and train someone to take their place...
...Think about those soldiers at the checkpoints eagerly asking contractors for their business cards...
...The Army felt that it had no jurisdiction over civilian contractors, so the case was turned over to the Bosnian police...
...Proponents of this sort of privatization have always contended that while taxpayers might pay private contractors ten times as much as an Army grunt, they can be used on a case-by-case basis and the military need not have the cost of maintaining standing forces waiting for a crisis...
...As the Iraq conflict demonstrates, many military duties that may not technically be considered core tasks nonetheless become so in the midst of war...
...George Fay found that only approximately 35 percent of civilian interrogators had training necessary for the job and that the use of contractors for a mission-critical task violated Army doctrine and was "problematic...
...Truck driving may not sound like an integral military responsibility, but if a driver delivering fuel to troops passes through combat zones, the truck driver may have a more intense military experience than anticipated...
...When news of Idema's arrest first broke, the government denied any knowledge of him...
...A lot of people are calling us private armies—and that's basically what we are," Wolf Weiss, the president of a private "security company" operating in Iraq, recently told Rolling Stone...
...DynCorp employee Ben Johnston has publicly told stories about 60year-old men watching the 14-year-old girls they bought for $600 play with other neighborhood children...
...After all, the long-term solvency and existence of a business requires new clients, and the ability to entice new clients is directly linked to the reputation of the corporation...
...In 1999, Dick Cheney while running Halliburton told the Economist, "the first person to greet our soldiers as they arrive and the last one to wave goodbye is one of our employees...
...STRENGTH AND HONOR TO ALL WHO LIVE BY THE CODE OF THE WARRIOR...
...Soldiers would have been court-martialed...
...Private firms offer an alternative mechanism for the executive body to conduct secret operations without other branches being involved," P. W. Singer writes in his authoritative study of the privatizedmilitary industry, Corporate Warriors...
...Machiavelli's warning is relevant to the United States as it increasingly privatizes its military operations...
...These private contractors do far more than clean the latrines, fold the laundry, and cook the meals...
...soldiers...
...Such a secretive atmosphere can lead to the most mystifying incidents...
...soldiers...
...Later, an official report authored by Lt...
...military control it entirely...
...NOVEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 29 YOU'RE NOT IN THE ARMY NOW The corporations argue that market forces discourage excesses by their employees...
...Thus, there is frequently no opportunity for legislative oversight...
...If an actual soldier breaks the rules, say, by using an unwarranted amount of force, he or she may be disciplined for doing so...
...Even in the researching of this article, the best help that DynCorp, Blackwater, and other private firms would provide was a pleasant brush-off and a half-hearted apology for not discussing government work...
...Anthony Jones and Maj...
...Private contractors, not 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004 SHAWN MACOMBER Air Force personnel, maintain many of the military's most opulent high-tech jewels: the Apache helicopter, U-2 reconnaissance airplane, F-117 stealth fighter, KC-10 refueling airplane, and B-2 stealth bomber among them...
...Adding to this perception is the fact that private contractors—while the vast majority are clearly honorable men—have on occasion committed heinous acts with impunity in war zones...
...CIVILIANS SERVING IN COMBAT ROLES abroad present a quandary for American officials...
...This is particularly expensive in the case of special forces, but even lower enlisted ranks in today's technologically driven war environment take considerable time and resources to train...
...Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon would outsource all but core military tasks, these tasks are changing, and military contractors perform many of them," Deborah Avant wrote in Foreign Policy...
...The "poison" in this case, he explained, was the draining of strength from the state to patrons of the state, a transfer that might seem sensible in times of plenty, but in times of adversity can be deadly...
...police action...
...According to the Center for Public Integrity, between 1994 and 2002 the Defense Department signed some 3,000 contracts with U.S...
...The status of these Blackwater employees obviously provides no excusefor their brutal murder...
...ally, aside from Iraqi forces themselves...
...The problem is that fewer and fewer of these special forces soldiers are sticking around as they are lured out of service by lucrative private salaries...
...occupation?—only further complicates the issue...
...Aside from the poor position that leaves us in vis-a-vis the special operations strike forces under our command, the fact of the matter is, when the military need highly skilled troops as they do now on a daily basis, they'll have to negotiate a deal with a private company...
...Marines...
...What happened to these criminal pedophiles...
...Those killings flared into a massive confrontation that resulted in the deaths of several U.S...
...That's nearly ten times as much as the average bottom-rung enlistee makes...
...Why doesn't our government just drop the contractors and pay the men and women already proudly serving their country a higher salary...
...Congress is only notified if a contract exceeds $50 million...
...Your t Army Now Should the Pentagon be in the business of outsourcing war...
Vol. 37 • November 2004 • No. 9
