Bill Moyer's recently interviewed Jeremy Scahill who provides in depth information on the extent to which military contractors are waging the "long war."
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world, but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era.
I suggest Obama is sending one message to the American people. The world remains far less naive about the realities of U.S. foreign policy.
Right now there are 250 thousand contractors fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about 50 percent of the total US fighting force. Which is very similar to what it was under Bush. In Iraq, President Obama has 130 thousand contractors. And we just saw a 23 percent increase in the number of armed contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan there's been a 29 percent increase in armed contractors. So the radical privatization of war continues unabated under Barack Obama.
One reason for the "radical privatization of war" is that the U.S. public has been steadily losing its taste for fighting these wars, as evidenced by the continual lowering of standards for entry into the volunatary armed services.
And also members of the U.S. military are beginning to actively oppose the wars formerly known as "The Global War on Terrorism." As reported by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now:
We turn now to the growing movement of GI resisters in this country. A US Army specialist who refused to deploy to Afghanistan faces a court-martial today and up to a month in jail.
...“There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect,” [twenty-four-year-old Specialist Victor Agosto] said.
Spc. Agosto came to his conclusions in Iraq while reading Chomsky:
AMY GOODMAN: How did you come to this decision?
SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: When I was in Iraq, I had done some reading. I thought about why I was actually there, why were we involved in these wars. And I read Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival, and it was from there that I realized that the concept that I had that we were there to help the people of Iraq, that America had some sort of moral superiority, was completely shattered from what I read there.
Scahill had more to say about Obama and contractors:
[T]he radical privatization of war continues unabated under Barack Obama. (emphasis mine)
Having said that, when Barack Obama was in the Senate he was one of the only people that was willing to take up this issue. And he put forward what became the leading legislation on the part of the Democrats to reform the contracting industry. And I give him credit for doing that. Because he saw this as an important issue before a lot of other political figures. And spoke up at a time when a lot of people were deafeningly silent on this issue. I've been critical of Obama's position on this because I think that he accepts what I think is a fundamental lie. That we should have a system where corporations are allowed to benefit off of warfare.
But corporations are not only allowed to benefit off of warfare, some of them THRIVE off of U.S. warfare / state-corporate welfare. One of the themes underlying all of Chomsky's writings is that the U.S. government subsidizes high tech military developments until corporations can figure out applications from which to profit from them: the development of computer chips; the development of the internet; the development of the aero-space industry.
I suggest that if Obama had not made it perfectly clear to "the powers that be" that he EMBRACED the "fundamental lie", he would never have been permitted to become president. The FIRE (finance, insurance, real-estate) sectors would not have thrown their financial support his way, and "the media" would not have provided him with the more favorable coverage (amongst democratic candidates).
How much sense does this Obama rationale for maintaining troops in Afghanistan make?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Make no mistake. We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.
This, the money quote. Understand this "plan" - to leave our troops (and contractors) in Afghanistan and Pakistan until we can "be confident that there are not violent extremists in those countries, determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can."
