A Necessary Evil

From the start of the war in Iraq there has been a detailed media coverage that is unparalleled compared to past conflicts. With this increased exposure many different aspects of war have been brought to the public’s ever judging eye that might not have ever existed before, mainly the use of contractors and most controversially armed contractors. You might ask, what is a contractor? Well in regards to the Iraq War it is any individual or company that is hired to do a specific job for the military. Many people question why we use these companies to fulfill jobs that some might consider a responsibility of the military. The reason is two fold, cost and man power.

The end of the Cold War brought about a dramatic downsize of America’s military. This reduction of both manpower and funds is not particularly hurtful especially during peace times, however it is very noticeable in the way the military operates during a conflict. Because of the scale of the Iraq War and the decrease in manpower the military has to rely more on the private sector more than ever before. The military has hired companies, most notable Halliburton and KBR, to fulfill roles for the troops that do not require a service member such as preparing meals, washing clothes, and other basic duties. With these types of roles taken care of the military can utilize its troops more productively.

The most controversial aspect of all this contract work is the armed contractors and Private Military Companies (PMC). Many people believe these contractors to be mercenaries doing America’s dirty work; this could not be further from the truth. In reality these individuals are just armed security guards. With the rebuilding of Iraq comes lots of things that need protection. Iraq is still an extremely dangerous place where anything can happen, everything from supplies to businessmen needs security. This is where the cost aspect comes in. It is very expensive for the U.S. military to send an armed convoy along with every truck full of gravel to rebuild something. With every soldier comes a whole network of logistics and support. The average cost of one soldier in Iraq for one year is $390,000. It is way cheaper to hire a company such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Aegis, or any of the other PMC’s to perform these security roles. Soldiers are trained to do many different things and it would be a waste of a precious resource to send them on security convoys everyday, especially while you have these PMC’s that specially trains their employees for convoy and VIP security.

I do realize that there is a lot of ongoing controversy as to whether these contract companies are making too much money off the Iraq War. I am not debating that, how ever I do believe that they serve a very necessary role and free up a lot of soldiers to do more important work.

Classmates Commentary

While reading through my classmate’s blogs I came upon A Smorgasbord of Politics original commentary about the Presidential election. I was very intrigued by the various points she made and how similar her views are to my own.

I strongly agree that a good many people in America vote or support an individual candidate based largely on that candidate’s race, gender, or physical appearance, particularly in our most recent presidential race. I am very pleased to have witnesses our nation’s first African American President be elected, however just because of his skin color it does not mean he is automatically going to bring about change. What will bring about change is his policies and how successful they are, these have no connection to race.

I found the idea of an anonymous election very insightful. It would be nice to have a process that eliminated any exterior biases in the voter’s minds to ensure that the absolute best candidate with the best policies would win and not the best looking candidate. I know a lot of people that look and talk very convincingly, but they are actually just full of malarkey. However as my classmate pointed out this would be extremely difficult to achieve. Even if some form of hybrid election process was created I don’t really have any confidence that it would be instated any time soon based on how willing our government is to update certain facets to changing times.