Welder, Plumber, Sniperman, Thief

How do we know that Congress has knowledge and has given consent?

Congress has to have at least a minimal knowledge because Blackwater is there under contract and that contract has to be funded through the annual Defense Appropriations Bill. Whether they've looked into it much deeper thatn that remains to be seen. It is a labor hour type of function which should come out of O&M funds which would mean the money to continue the contract has to be appropriated annually.

(Several Congressional reps have mentioned Blackwater in speeches or comments on their WWW sites so at least some of them are aware that something is going on with them.)

I'm too tired to make sense tonight. I am concerned about the corporate culture mixing with the military, but I can't put it into words right now. I have more questions than answers. Are we turning war into something we hire people to do? Is this an extension of the smart bomb approach to war? Keeping it all at arm's length?

I'm concerned about it too Swimpy and I too have more questions that I have yet to wrap up. I thought about this for a couple of days before posting the question and I have thought about it a lot since then too.

Frankly, it is a bit alarming to me to think that mercenaries have always been around and that makes it okay.

And the thinking that "they signed up for three years so that makes it okay for them to make a lot of money" makes me feel.... well... so sad... and .... well.... kind of defeated.... thinking about soldiers like my brother who have spent at least that much time there.....

God, not to mention these young men who signed up for the military to defend America who are coming home in caskets.

I have yet to completely wrap my head around it but you know... this isn't okay. It's really kind of heart-breaking.

As Set mentioned, it is something that has been done in many, many cultures over the centuries. But for us, I think it is an outgrowth of the OMB A-76 mandate that has been in place since the late 1950s. (It wasn't originally OMB A-76 but I don't remeber the original mandate number at the moment!)

Anyway, A-76 requires a cost-benefit analysis of every aspect of government to determine if it can be done most effectively by a private company or the government. Things started off fairly slowly with minor use of contractors during Vietnam. Then in the post-Vietnam era we had a lot of government/military people so there wasn't much of a push to contract as much out.

During the Reagan era there was a push to reap the "peace benefit" of the end of the cold war so a lot of military bases were closed and many of the functions at bases that remained open were "outsourced" to contractors. Since the late 1980s the theme in general had been to cut-cut-cut as far as military personnel and bases (with several major equipment upgrades at the same time).

In every round of base closings there were installations that were closed and others that were outsourced. A part of that outsourcing includes provisions so that if were go to war the contractor employees are subject to deployment.

I don't think there was a concious decision to outsource as a way to keep things at arms length. I see it more as having been short sighted. In an effort to placate the ppublic with reduced military expenditures the politicos to the politically expedient measures to cut costs without fully thinking through what the impact would be in case of a major war.

Maybe you're right, fishin', but I don't think the public has been aware of the extent of outsourcing until now. I would like to see a lot more disclosure on this subject. I think there needs to be a public debate about what we want our military to look like. The cost overruns in Iraq are staggering. How much of that is because we entered into no-bid contracts with these mercenariies?

I don't think the casualties among the mercenaries are as high as the casualities as among the "official" military, but there have been deaths.

Did anyone else notice that, for efficiency, one is now allowed to make his check to IRS payable to Halliburton?

I have not suggested that because mercenaries have been around for nearly as long as organized warfare, that "makes it OK." One of the problems with that statement is that it begs the question at the outset, implying that employing mercenaries ought not to be OK, and that if it is done, it ought to be justified.

The reasons for mercenaries have been as various as the excuses people have advanced for making war. Cyrus hired the ten thousand Greeks because there was no way he could have opposed his meager resources against Ataxerxes and his Persian "Immortals," the only other ten thousands soldiers in that part of the world who had a chance to stand up to the Greeks (the Immortals failed, but Cyrus was killed anyway). But Cyrus had the cash, so that was enough to convince him to take the risk.

The later Roman Empire--usually called the Byzantine Empire--hired mercenaries for two good and sufficient reasons. The first was that standing armies are always more reliable than levying the population, and they usually remain more reliably loyal to the one paying them, so long as he meets the payroll. The other was that the eastern portion of the Empire survived while the western part collapsed economically because slavery had been almost completely eliminated from Anatolia long before, and the Emperors had sufficient sense not to disturb the source of their tax prosperity, so they hired the Saravangian Rus and the Anglo-Saxon refugees of the Norman Conquest, or anyone else who offered who could do the job, and leave the peasants undistrubed. It was actually quite an intelligent policy.

But just a few centuries later, the most feared infantry in Europe were the Spanish tercios, and unlike many armies of the day, their ranks were largely filled with Spaniards, rather than mercenaries. But these were the poorest of the poor among the Spaniards, and there was a lot of true hard-scrabble poverty in Spain in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was at least, a job, which these men could not have gotten in Estramadura (the most fertile recruiting ground), and in the mean time, it relieved their impoverished family of the necessity of feeding them. If they could survive the standard enlistment (15 or 20 years, depending upon exactly when they signed up), they might actually have enough cash saved to come home and help out the family, and maybe even by some land and become an Ancestor. Charles V and Philip II could not always pay them, so they'd turn them loose to loot a city in Italy or Germany, which the tercios probably liked better, because they had a chance to get more than they were owed in ordinary wages.

But this leads me to ask what the difference is between paying a foreign mercenary, and paying one's own citizens. Levies of the peasants, feudal levies and the impressment of soldiers or sailors hasn't worked very well historically, and the militia is an ugly joke, which isn't funny because their historical incompetence and cowardice gets people killed. More than two thousand years ago, the order of Plebs at Rome marched of the city and abandoned it, and only returned when the Senate agreed to pay the members of the legions while they were on service. Roman legions were paid for their services ever after, and smart and successful emperors always made that the first order of business. The feudal levies in Europe which succeeded Rome were thoroughly unreliable, and could be lethal to those who depended upon them. Edward I of England established the first Parliament to regularize his income, so he could hire his troops and would never have to rely on the feudal levy--he and his father, Henry III, had been captured by the rebel Montforts, and held hostage, because not only could they not rely on the feudal levy, but half of those feudal barons joined the rebels. Richard III called out "My kingdom for a horse" because his feudal servant, the Duke of Norfolk, sat on a hill with half the army, and didn't raise a hand to save him when Henry Tudor's army overwhelmed the few troops who had stayed loyal.

So, for all the claptrap about embattled farmers and militias, modern nations, our own included, rely upon soldiers and sailors who are hired to do a job which everyone recognizes needs to be done. Generals and Admirals dine well, ride in comfortable cars or helicopters, earn good livings, get great retirement packages and have good opportunities to find employment with corporate concerns who value their knowledge of the system and their contacts in the services and the Defense Department. Private soldiers are lucky if they get body armor, and can count themselves lucky if their wives and children can find housing which doesn't leak and is well enough insulated to keep them warm in winter. Frequently their families have enough to eat only if they get food stamps or sign up for the WIC program. God help them if they are maimed but not killed--dead, there would at least be something for their families in the way of back pay and benefits, and insurance payments. Maimed, they are thrown on the mercy of a government notorious for forgetting the "thin red line of heroes" as soon as the bands stop playing.

So, in the end, the difference between the enlisted soldier and these privately contracted mercenaries lies solely in how well they are treated. I don't personally think there is anything wrong with hiring mercenaries, if it makes the most sense. I do see something drastically wrong with the elitist and exploitational system we have for recruiting the poorer members of our society, or the enthusiastic patriotic young men and women, or dangling educational support benefits before them--and then treating them like a cheap, non-union labor force to be discarded when no longer needed. I think if we can afford to pay these kind of benefits to private contracted mercenaries, we can as easily afford to pay our enisted soldiers decently, take care of their families, and take of them if they are maimed in the national service--and probably save some money into the bargain. I think we are probably long past the point at which it is any longer cost effective to employ privately-contracted mercenaries.

I'm not sure that's true Set. What about the concept of shared sacrifice? Aren't we more likely to choose war more easily if we've got less to lose? I know mercenaries have mothers, too. But if our national treasure, ie our sons and daughters will have to make that sacrifice, I dare say we think about it longer and harder before making the decision for war.

I don't say this to insult your intelligence, Swimpy, but do you seriously think that jackass on Pennsylvania Avenue and his cronies have any concept of "shared sacrifice?" What part of the current sacrifice are they sharing? I don't seriously believe that in the contemporary age, the people who make the decision to make war have any more sense of responsibility than to their own prospects for re-election.

By the way, you seem to have missed the point that whereas i don't consider there to be anything wrong with hiring mercenaries, i do think our money would be better spent to take better care of our enlisted soldiers and their families, and to pay them a good deal more than we do now.

Well, I don't say this to insult YOUR intelligence, but it's still our country. We, the people, remember? I'm not naive enough to think that a president who wants to deceive a country into war can't do it, I just think that the country has become complacent because we've had a relatively few casualties in wars of the recent past. The more we use volunteer soldiers, contractors and smart bombs, the less the citizens have to sacrifice, the easier the decision to go to war is. Makes sense to me, anyway.

Makes sense to me too.

I understand your point--but i also don't think it is valid both because the public is so easily manipulated, and because you can get the war band wagon rolling before the butcher's bill has to be paid. We the people can be so easily cozened because of the lag time between major wars. Between Vietnam and the invasion of Iraq, our only major military engagement was the Gulf War of 1990-91, and Pappy Bush actually managed that one pretty well. It was possible to make people feel good about that war, and it was over quickly enough and with sufficiently few casualties that people could continue to feel good about it.

This war is different, but very much like Johnson in Vietnam in 1964. By the time We the People knew what has hit us, it was already up and running, and had a twisted life of its own. I think, i am sad to say, that much of the American public, perhaps most of it, bought all that "shock and awe" crap, and all the loony stories about Iraqis welcoming us with open arms. It has taken a few years for it to sink in how we have been cozened.

So it's always been that way, we must abandon all hope. Cynicism doesn't get us anywhere either.

Set
I remember the president and his admin. selling the WOMD to the people but I also remember the U.N. people telling us that there were no weapons in Iraq. The people I blame the most for the war is the news media. They didn't check anything Bush and his bunch of liers claimed even though there were many people telling us they were lying to us. The news media is supposed to be protecting our freedoms, not helping to take them away from us. I think that the news media should be taken away from the corporations who use it for their own interests.

Cynicism is not what i have recommended, although you seem content to continue to ignore that. What i have recommended is that the money being spent on private contractors, on mercenaries, be spent to assure decent living conditions for GIs and their families, and to give them hefty pay raises. Perhaps Congress would be less willing to send them in harm's way when it represented a major, visible expenditure--although i doubt it.

All the righteous indignation you're venting may feel good, but it has little to do with reality. In the first place, mercenaries such as are employed by the United States (and who so gleefully rip off the tax payer--witness Halliburton) are rarely used in combat roles, although they are frequently used in security roles in areas in which significant combat is not expected. So the argument that perhaps we'd be less willing to go to war if there were no mercenaries, if there were more of a concept of "shared sacrifice" doesn't hold water. The people who most consistently go in harm's way, and take the casualties, are the enlisted soldiers, not the mercenaries.

In the second place, it takes "we the people" to get us involved in a war. The Democrats were as eager to give the Shrub his war powers as the Republicans were, because polls showed that conservative propagandists had done their job well, and that more than half the population believed Iraq was (against all reason and evidence) involved in the September 11th attacks. In the climate of the times, voting for war was a no brainer for any politician who hoped to be re-elected. Even in 2004, with the war under way, conservative propagandists were able to feed the public the "better to fight the terrorists there than here" line of crap, and the Shrub was actually seen as some kind of heroic "war President."

So before you sneer at me for cynicism, suppose you tell me how refusing to employ civilian contrators will effectively create that atmosphere of shared sacrifice of which you wrote. Explain how refusing to employ civilian contractors will prevent the rush to war in the face of effective propaganda, if you please. When most people don't even know the mercenaries are there, and few of the mercenaries are ever the casualties of war, perhaps you can explain to me how eliminating them will lead people to a reluctance to go to war.

I guess i don't want to be the target of the righteous indignation when i'm not at fault for the situation being complained about, and it seemed you were beating up on me.

The questions which come to my mind are: Do we think about the probably consequences of wars before we engage in them? (To which the answer is complex, but, basically, if we haven't had an unpleasant experience of war recently, i'd say no, we don't think about the probable consequences; additionally, you get propaganda efforts such as the administration's touting "shock and awe" and alleging the Iraqis would strew flowers at the feet of our soldiers). And, what should be done about it. The latter is more problematic. Most Americans do not either question an administration who alleges a threat and calls for war (c.f. Goering's comment on the ease of leading the public to war); nor are they (the public) aware of situations such as that with the private contractors, and generally don't delve that deeply into public affairs. So how do you whip up enough interest that politicians are willing to react?

Also, i think that the assumption that employing private contractors makes it easier to go to war is not well-founded. They are not the ones who usually actively go into harm's way, so the loss of troops isn't altered or is altered very, very little, by the use of private contractors. To me, it is more interesting that these jokers are employed for security services--something the military ought always to do itself. And i question if private contractors are any longer used to save the government money. I suspect that although cost-savings may have been the original impetus (after all, we don't expect the military to raise the cattle and harvest the grain with which it feeds its members) and a good one, that it has now gotten out of hand. I suspect that, like defense equipment contracting, all the parties concerned, including politicians and retired military members, have a sweet deal, which they don't want nosey reporters and citizens to queer.

I suspect that a careful investigation of military contracting would probably reveal that the military could actually do a lot of these things much more cheaply than contractors. I have no doubt the Mr. Cheney really, really doesn't want anyone going over Halliburton's books with a fine-toothed comb.