Hmmm....

[unixronin]

We've heard it a hundred times:  "The Bush administration hired mercenaries!  Civilian deaths! Bush evil!  KBR!  Blackwater!  Obama would never have done anything like that!"

Without much notice or debate, the Obama administration has greatly expanded the outsourcing of key parts of the U.S.-led counterinsurgency wars in the Middle East and Africa, and as a result, for its secretive air war and special operations missions around the world, the U.S. has become increasingly reliant on a new breed of specialized companies that are virtually unknown to the American public, yet carry out vital U.S. missions abroad.

Companies such as Blackbird Technologies, Glevum Associates, K2 Solutions, and others have won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military and intelligence contracts in recent years to provide technology, information on insurgents, Special Forces training, and personnel rescue.  They win their work through the large, established prime contractors, but are tasked with missions only companies with specific skills and background in covert and counterinsurgency can accomplish.

...Oops.  What was that you were saying, again?

Look, there's basically a choice here.  You hire in these specialized civilian contractors when you need their special skills, or you train up additional specialized military units and you keep paying for them and their equipment and training (oh yeah, and their C3 infrastructure) all the time, even when you're not using them.

Your call.  I'll wait.

Comments

[chaos-israel.livejournal.com]

Look, there's basically a choice here. You hire in these specialized civilian contractors when you need their special skills, or you train up additional specialized military units and you keep paying for them and their equipment and training (oh yeah, and their C3 infrastructure) all the time, even when you're not using them.

Your call. I'll wait.

Civilian contractors also avoid that horribly inconvenient oath to defend the Constitution of the United States the military is subject to.

[unixronin]

That is a valid point. I understand most of the civilian contractors are operating under military command and control, though, which should mitigate that factor. Plus, I don't think the US Constitution is in force in Afghanistan in the first place, which makes it a little of a moot point.


Now, if the government were hiring private paramilitary forces to perform actions within the United States that directly contravene the Constitution, that would definitely be a problem. But I don't think it would end well for the government, or at least for the sitting administration that issued the orders.

[wyrdling]

they passed several laws during the bush administration to keep the contractors even less liable for their misbehavior than the military. they do not have to live up to the same standard... so they don't. if that were remedied, i would have far less problems with their existence and usage.

i wonder how this compares to the practice of calling up the merchant marine in times of war... the legal structures there, as opposed to here...

[hugh_mannity]

There's a 3rd option. Stop invading sovereign nations who do not pose a clear and present danger to the USA. That way you don't need either a large standing army or private contractors.

[ithildae]

Does the attack on the WTC count as a clear and present danger? How about the attempts on airlines since then? (I do understand that virtually all the public disclosures of terrorist plots have been FBI instigated. They have yet to stop the failed attempts since then.) The US has a history of supporting civil liberties around the globe. I understand that our current administration is against that, but I would like to leave the option open should we choose to become the symbol of freedom and hope for the world again. (Oops, that is why the terrorists are attacking, isn't it?)

[hugh_mannity]

The terrorists are not attacking the US for it's freedoms. They're attacking it in response to the US's foreign policy which, far from supporting civil liberties tends to support dictators and oppressive regimes: Saddam Hussain and the Shah of Iran being two nasty characters who were supported by the US.

Then there's the US support for Israel despite their continuing obliteration of the civil liberties of the Palestinians.

The "war on terror" is complete and utter bullshit. War is a diplomatic relationship between two (or more) nations. You can't declare war on a tactic (terror), a social issue (poverty, substance abuse) or a disease (cancer, obesity).

All this "supporting civil liberties around the globe" thing is crap. It's interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations and the US has no right to do it, any more than any other nation has to interfere in the US's internal issues (such as sending observers oversee the US electoral process to prevent fraud for example; or sending troops to take out US meth labs or burn US cannabis fields).

The attack on the WTC was a lucky one-off. The attempted hijackings since haven't been as successful as the hijackings of the 30+ years prior to 9/11. Or don't you remember all the Cuban, Red Army Faction, and Bader Meinhof hijackers of the '70s and '80s.

Hijackings and air piracy are a minor security issue at best.

[rant]

[unixronin]

You know, I find the Palestinian cause a pretty difficult one to argue. They're a "homeless" people for two reasons — because nobody wants them, and because they make a convenient catspaw for the rest of the Arab nations to have sitting on Israel's doorstep, a ready supply of free cannon fodder where they can be periodically stirred up and launched against Israel. They're "led", if you can call it that, by two factions, one of which is openly controlled from Teheran, the other openly controlled from Damascus. Neither Syria nor Iran makes any particular effort to hide its puppetry, because both know that the majority of the world's press will fall over backwards not to see the Syrian and Iranian wrists protruding from Palestine's ass in their eagerness to see the Palestinians as poor oppressed underdogs crushed under the iron heel of De Ebbil Joos.

Why does nobody else in the Middle East want the Palestinians? Well, they got kicked out of their last home, Jordan, after the third time they tried to violently overthrow its lawful government, the monarchy of King Hussein bin Talal (who was, frankly, a pretty damn upstanding guy).

Yet despite that, quite frankly, the Israelis have bent over backward to try to accommodate them and come to some kind of equitable living arrangement with them. They have offered concession after concession, and the Palestinians have accepted the concessions and then gone for their throats with teeth bared. Israel has offered to give them Israeli territory and acknowledge them as an independent state. Israel has offered them full Israeli citizenship. The Palestinians have responded to both offers with terrorist raids, suicide bombings, and a fanatical determination to see Israel erased from the face of the planet. And yes, Israel has responded as it must. Israel's current policy is largely based on an attempt to try to deny the Palestinians the wherewithal to keep attacking it, an attempt which is doomed to failure because half the rest of the world has been taken in by the plight of the poor oppressed underdog Palestinians and keeps trying to supply them with the wherewithal to continue making random unannounced attacks against civilian targets.

Yes, some of the Israeli settlers on the West Bank are really pushing it. I can't say I blame them too greatly; they've had it with the Palestinians' shit and wish their government would stop dicking around and just push them into the sea. I can understand their position. Personally I think the Israelis have displayed commendable restraint in not simply carpet-bombing both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As a friend observed, the crowning triumph of the Palestinians is that they've managed to make the Israelis as crazy as they are.

I've said this many times before. I will say it again, and I will continue to say it. There is precisely one way that the Palestinians can have peace between themselves and Israel, and the world can see a peaceful end to the "Palestinian crisis". But the Palestinians have to do it. It's staggeringly simple, and can be stated in three words:

"Stop attacking Israel."

That's it. Period. Stop attacking Israel. Then Israel will be able to stop retaliating in their own defense, and will be able to, like, you know, HELP THE PALESTINIANS REBUILD. It's not like they haven't done it before. They've built the Palestinians schools. They've built them hospitals. And what have the Palestinians done in thanks?

...Launched rocket attacks from them at Israel.

[/rant]

[unixronin]

As for the rest of your points ...

The biggest problem with the "War on Terror" is that it's a stupid name. But it was coined for the mainstream mass media, who these days are basically stupid in the first place. The truth is, it's a defensive war against fanatical, Wahhabist Islam, which takes the position that there are three kinds of humans blessed by Allah — Muslims, dhimmi, and dead ones — and that the Faithful have a holy mission to wipe the earth clean of all humans who will not either become Muslims or accept dhimmitude. And being a dhimmi, in terms of human rights, is barely better than being a slave, and perhaps slightly below being a dog. It is not a crime, under Shari'a law, for a Muslim to kill a dhimmi, for example.

As for the Red Army Faction, the Baader-Meinhof gang et al, they weren't ideological warriors; that was just a convenient cause to fly their flag under. The truth is, they just liked killing people. 9/11, despite the well-meaning (but craven) interference of Congress, effectively ended airline hijacking as a viable tactic. Terrorists have moved on to other things, and for the most part, failed ... as far as their individual operations go. But in their overall campaign, like it or not, they are WINNING.

How are they winning, when their operations fail?

Because their operations don't have to succeed. They just have to make our governments keep responding to their failed operations. They ring a bell, and our governments obediently salivate on demand. The terrorists DON'T NEED to mount successful operations. They just have to sponsor the occasional plausible attempt, and our governments will do their work for them. Because our governments are huddled in the corner pissing their pants in fear. Just recently, an Austrian judge fined an Austrian citizen 800 Euros for yodeling while mowing his lawn because his Muslim neighbors complained that it was an insult to their religion. Hello? Austrians have been yodeling for a thousand years.



I'll grant and agree with your point about interfering in other nations. The US has a particular blind spot in that regard, in that it's always been willing to overlook the overthrow of some banana republic's legitimate government for commercial profit (the origin, indeed, of the term banana republic), and willing to overlook the excesses of bloody-handed tyrants as long as they're right-wing bloody-handed tyrants who at least make a halfway plausible pretense of being our allies against communism. Because, just like our mainstream media, frankly our government is pretty damned stupid.

Personally I think we need to bring about 90% of our troops stationed overseas home, with the principal exception of embassy guards and (currently) anti-piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa. But we need to make it clearly understood by the resurgent Russian hegemony that this doesn't mean we'll turn a blind eye while they take over half of Europe again. (Then again, it would behoove Europe to learn to stand on its own more and depend less on the US for military strength. NATO is moribund and tottering, and rotting from the inside; it just hasn't fallen over yet.)


(oops. Mismatched HTML tags fixed.)

[ithildae]

The name "War on Terror" is stupid. It is a media thing to make a clever [not!] catch phrase in headlines. Terrorism is an asymmetric form of combat.

The Palestinians and Israelis will stop fighting when they both decide it is time to make peace. It takes BOTH of them making that decision. Until they both decide, nothing anyone else does will make the slightest difference in their situation. No one is capable of that level of interference.

Every nation "interferes" with their neighbors. Whether through military adventures, trade, movements of peoples, or just plain manipulating them, it is a function of people and life. The problem is, it is only interference when it is not doing what I like, otherwise it is cultural tolerance and sharing.

My dad grew up in the Prussia area of Europe. His family was really happy about the interference America provided. Sometimes we come down on the bad side of things, but mostly, we get it right. It is not evil to support our economic interests abroad, even militarily, when vital resources are threatened.

Hijacking stopped being viable 11-Sep-2001. Period. No passengers will allow it to happen ever again, when they know they will die if they let it go on. The attempts now are to catastrophically damage the plane in flight. If the passengers feel threatened, those will not happen either.

Supporting civil liberties is what we used to do as a nation. It shows. How many nations have governments patterned after ours? Even nations of tyrants use a constitution, have elections. Insurgents around the globe wanting a more free form of government used to always find US $$$'s to help in some fashion. It made sense, free governments allow free trade. We were the masters of trade. Free people made us richer. (And them richer, too, a nice perk.)