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I had one of those 'perfect storm' moments today when two articles managed to hit me with opposing viewpoints in the space of an hour: an Interview with Chet Richards, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel and author of the book 'Neither Shall the Sword: Conflict in the Years Ahead', and 'For a fistful of dollars', by BB Timberlake in the August 2006 issue of Esquire (UK). (Reading both articles isn't necessary)
The last part of the Reason interview and the entirety of the Esquire article concerns itself with 'Private Security Companies' (PSCs), essentially large mercenary outifts. There are currently around 25,000 armed contractors in Iraq, most are former soldiers who have difficulty adjusting to life on 'Civvy street' or are looking to clear debts, recruited through 'The Circuit'- their name for a web of connections made during Military life that acts as a job market once army life has ended.
According to Chet Richards: "We're spending half a trillion dollars, and when you look around, who's it going to defend us from? It didn't defend us from Al Qaeda. What are all these armored divisions doing out there, these mech divisions, all this other stuff that's basically left over from the Cold War and for that matter even World War II? I couldn't think of a good reason...If you look back through human history, this monopoly of force by the state, even in Europe, came along pretty recently. Privateers were legal up until the early 1900s. Up until then, much of the world's naval power was provided by private security companies...This gets into my natural loathing of monopolies. What we need in the United States is a way to harness creativity and initiative and entrepreneurship to solve at least a chunk of the problem of national security. Why leave that in the hands of state-sponsored bureaucracy, which has proven to be the least efficient, the least creative, the least dynamic sector of our society?"
According to Richards employing PSEs solves many of the problems Coalition forces are facing in Iraq- they're accountable (no more Abu Gharibs), efficient and adaptable. They police themselves: "If Blackwater starts doing things that are too egregious, there's an incentive for a Triple Canopy to rat them out. The Second Armored Cav doesn't have any incentive to rat out the Third Armored Cav"
The Esquire article, written from Iraq, paints a different picture: the current PSEs on the ground are cowboys as bad as the U.S forces, sometimes worse. There is talk (at a pool party in the Green Zone where many of the guests are armed) of new recruits being taken on drive-by shooting sprees to get 'blooded', the 'Aegis video' showing contractors indiscriminately firing at cars on a Baghdad freeway and the rich kids using daddy's diplomatic contacts to have a jolly good adventure out in the desert running the PSEs. It's not a pretty picture, and it's just the tip of the iceberg.
And yet I can't help but think that Richards still has a point. Perhaps the relative lack of funding and legitimacy of PSEs means the job attracts the wrong crowd- the washouts, dishonorables discharges and Walter Mittys. Perhaps with serious investment PSEs could be the much-needed change to the Military that would prevent another Iraq and make 'Fourth Generation' wars winnable by the (relatively) good guys. The interviewer in the Reason article also floats the possibility of PSEs being contracted for humanitarian missions, in Darfur for instance, where governments won't get involved.
Your thoughts? |
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