Revolver


Yesterday we were treated to the specter of the Commander Smirk-Chimp-in-Chief in full pant/hyperventilate mode as he struggled with, and ultimately failed to answer, a question about private security contractors (like Blackwater employees) and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Today William S. Lind looks at the other side of this particular/peculiar equation:

In Exodus, the Fourth Plague sent upon the Egyptians was a plague of flies. A similar plague of flies has settled on the U.S. military, in the form of a swarm of retired senior officers working as contractors. Not satisfied with their generous pensions, they wheedle six-figure contracts out of senior officer "buddies" still on active duty. In return for steam shovel loads of the taxpayers' money, they offer "advice" that is, overwhelmingly, flyspeck.

The problem is that these contractors are businessmen, and business is a whore. The goal of business is profit, not truth. Profit requires getting the next contract. Getting the next contract means telling whomever gave you the current contract what he wants to hear. If what he wants to hear isn't true, so what? Just start the "study" by writing the desired conclusion, then bugger the evidence to fit. The result is endless intellectual corruption, billions of dollars wasted and military services that, as institutions, can no longer think.

The plague of senior officer contractors has effectively pushed those still in the military out of the thought process. Meeting after meeting on issues of doctrine on concepts are dominated by contractors. The officers in the room know that if they wave the BS flag at the contractors, they risk angering the serving senior officers who have given their "buddies" the contract. Junior officers, who have the most direct experience with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are completely excluded. They have no chance of being heard in meetings dominated by retired generals and colonels.

Not only does contracting out thinking bring intellectual corruption, it adds a whole new layer of dinosaurism to the thought process. Most retired senior officers' minds froze in the Fulda Gap many years ago, and that remains their vision of war. Further, any change is automatically an attack on their "legacies," which they are quick to defend. Twenty years ago, once the dinosaur retired, you could push him into the tar pit and move on. Now he is back the next day in a suit, with a six-figure contract.

Like the insurance scam noted below, the outsourcing of the military is little more than a deadly mix and match of free-market zeal and abject greed--with widespread misery and suffering served on the side. Then there's the added bonus of incompetence and lack of capibility when, oh, say, a natural disaster strikes--and the relentless/mindless pursuit of profit runs headlong into social obligation. Guess what loses out?

Hint: the American public does.