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

[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]