The only way to win is cheat*
There is an interesting comment in an LA Times piece by T. Christian Miller last Sunday (November 27, 2005.)In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.The death of Col. Ted Westhusing raises some troubling questions. Whether it was suicide, as the government has concluded, or murder by the contractors he was investigating, as his family believes, one subject remains constant: corruption. Profiteers have been around as long as military contractors, and merchants of death as long as the nexus between the marketplace and the battlefield. But, like it or not, the U.S. military has long relied upon an ethos that stands apart from self-interest and market conditions.
Iraq does not reveal that there is a conspiracy on the part of corporations to profit from the war. There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy. Corporate interests are now indistinguishable from executive policy. Suicide or murder, the reality of this situation killed Col. Westhusing.
*Irony?
posted by Linus Kafka @ 8:27 PM
2 Comments:
Welcome back, Linus.
I work for a defense contractor but I have to agree with you that there are tremendous problems with the ongoing wholesale outsourcing of DoD functions. I'm particularly worried about the effects of contracting out core military functions. When contractors are performing what are essentially combat arms functions, there's a major problem. All I can do is quibble at the margins. What I've encountered in the contracting world for the most part is not dramatically different from what I saw when I was in uniform. Some of the people put national interest above everything else, some are loyal only to the group that they belong to, whether that is a defense company or a tank company, and some are just out for themselves. It pains me whenever I hear about contractors putting profits above the interests of the country. But don't let a romanticized view of the military blind you to the fact that it was high ranking men in uniform from every Service who told Congress that they didn't need a manning increase when they clearly did, simply to protect their careers.
Wise commentary, Mojo. Thank you. I certainly hope I don't come across as romanticizing the military. I do think they have historically relied on a noble ethos, but I'll make no claims to how frequently they've acted upon it.
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