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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.
no subject
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.)