Saturday, April 03, 2004
A Republic of Mercenaries: Why billions for planes and tanks but no body armor for troops?
Why is it that Bush hasn't gotten the troops their body armor yet? You'd think a war preznit could arrange that kind of thing with a stroke of the pen through an Executive Order. After all, just because John Kerry says to do it doesn't make it a bad idea.
Why is it that Bush screws up their payrolls, screws up their combat pay, screws up their health care, and screws up their benefits? Why does he send troops who aren't combat-ready into combat? (Guardian)
The answer came to me this morning: I think it's a variant of Starve the Beast. This may seem counter-intuitive, but hear me out.
Under Bush, the big defense contractors will never be privatized, in the sense of being forced to compete—and a great power does need weaponry (though perhaps not so very much, and it would be nice if it all worked).
However, the work that the troops, the grunts, do can be privatized, and is being so. The strategy is to keep wages and working conditions lousy (see above), keep turnover high, and cream off a percentage of those who leave the military into mercenary armies, like Blackwater. The mercenary armies are (a) doubtless large Republican contributors and (b) allow the President to make war whenever and however he wants, without being subject to all that pesky Congressional oversight.
Needless to say, that's not the kind of military a Republic can have, and stay a Republic. Praetorian Guard, anyone?
Now, Blackwater brings me to the events in Fallujah. In my original post on this, (Gruesome pictures, back), I wrote that I doubted that the contractors knew what they were really signing up for. Several alert readers wrote in to say that the victims were from Blackwater, and that they knew exactly what they were signing up for.
Those readers were right, though nobody deserves to be burned to death and hung from a bridge, whether it's a risk they knew they were taking or not.
But I think the distinction I tried to draw still has force. When a citizen joins the military, he or she takes an oath (ibid) to protect and defend the country. When an employee joins a mercenary army, he or she signs a contract. It's wrong to confuse an oath to defend the country with a contract to perform certain services for money, and to give both equal status.
In fact, to say that the oath which the troops take is the moral equivalent of the contract which mercenaries sign is to open the door to a privatized military: A Republic of Mercenaries. Mercenaries are now the third largest international force in Iraq, after the US and the UK. So Kos (thanks to alert reader Ricky Vandal) has this one exactly right.
Of course, the SCLM is behaving even worse than usual on this. As Kos points out, the deaths of contractors got more coverage than the deaths of the troops. That's wrong, and the SCLM was clearly (despite the handwringing) driven to push the story because of the photos which were, indeed, gruesome. So the SCLM is contributing, in its own way, to a Republic of Mercenaries as well.
You know, every so often a hiker gets lost in the woods, and the government has to spend tens of thousands of dollars to helicopter them back to civilization and treat them for exposure. The story is then generally treated by the wingers as a little parable of moral hazard, since if the hiker had known they would die if lost in woods, instead of being rescued, they would have taken care not to get lost in the first place.
Isn't using the full force of the US military to rescue or avenge mercenaries exactly the same case of moral hazard writ large? Shouldn't we be seeking to "pacify" Fallujah (if such a thing is possible) because the country has foreign policy goals it undertakes on behalf of its citizens, as opposed to "responding" on behalf of mercenaries who knew what they were getting into?
So, the future: Big Defense pocketing billions, mercenary armies pocketing billions, no democratic oversight, and all for the buck. After lying, looting is what Republicans do best!
UPDATE Kos to the wingers on this issue: Bring it on! Steve Gilliard has some heated commentary on the issue here.
Why is it that Bush screws up their payrolls, screws up their combat pay, screws up their health care, and screws up their benefits? Why does he send troops who aren't combat-ready into combat? (Guardian)
The answer came to me this morning: I think it's a variant of Starve the Beast. This may seem counter-intuitive, but hear me out.
Under Bush, the big defense contractors will never be privatized, in the sense of being forced to compete—and a great power does need weaponry (though perhaps not so very much, and it would be nice if it all worked).
However, the work that the troops, the grunts, do can be privatized, and is being so. The strategy is to keep wages and working conditions lousy (see above), keep turnover high, and cream off a percentage of those who leave the military into mercenary armies, like Blackwater. The mercenary armies are (a) doubtless large Republican contributors and (b) allow the President to make war whenever and however he wants, without being subject to all that pesky Congressional oversight.
Needless to say, that's not the kind of military a Republic can have, and stay a Republic. Praetorian Guard, anyone?
Now, Blackwater brings me to the events in Fallujah. In my original post on this, (Gruesome pictures, back), I wrote that I doubted that the contractors knew what they were really signing up for. Several alert readers wrote in to say that the victims were from Blackwater, and that they knew exactly what they were signing up for.
Those readers were right, though nobody deserves to be burned to death and hung from a bridge, whether it's a risk they knew they were taking or not.
But I think the distinction I tried to draw still has force. When a citizen joins the military, he or she takes an oath (ibid) to protect and defend the country. When an employee joins a mercenary army, he or she signs a contract. It's wrong to confuse an oath to defend the country with a contract to perform certain services for money, and to give both equal status.
In fact, to say that the oath which the troops take is the moral equivalent of the contract which mercenaries sign is to open the door to a privatized military: A Republic of Mercenaries. Mercenaries are now the third largest international force in Iraq, after the US and the UK. So Kos (thanks to alert reader Ricky Vandal) has this one exactly right.
Of course, the SCLM is behaving even worse than usual on this. As Kos points out, the deaths of contractors got more coverage than the deaths of the troops. That's wrong, and the SCLM was clearly (despite the handwringing) driven to push the story because of the photos which were, indeed, gruesome. So the SCLM is contributing, in its own way, to a Republic of Mercenaries as well.
You know, every so often a hiker gets lost in the woods, and the government has to spend tens of thousands of dollars to helicopter them back to civilization and treat them for exposure. The story is then generally treated by the wingers as a little parable of moral hazard, since if the hiker had known they would die if lost in woods, instead of being rescued, they would have taken care not to get lost in the first place.
Isn't using the full force of the US military to rescue or avenge mercenaries exactly the same case of moral hazard writ large? Shouldn't we be seeking to "pacify" Fallujah (if such a thing is possible) because the country has foreign policy goals it undertakes on behalf of its citizens, as opposed to "responding" on behalf of mercenaries who knew what they were getting into?
So, the future: Big Defense pocketing billions, mercenary armies pocketing billions, no democratic oversight, and all for the buck. After lying, looting is what Republicans do best!
UPDATE Kos to the wingers on this issue: Bring it on! Steve Gilliard has some heated commentary on the issue here.
