I was reading the news over the weekend when I happened upon this Reuters story:
Four soldiers belonging to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan were killed by insurgents during an operation on Sunday, while a fifth was shot dead by a security guard over the weekend in the country’s south.
Of course I am saddened that at this late date, we are still generating dead soldiers in Afghanistan. But I have one question: Why do a bunch of armed soldiers need security guards?
The answer of course is that these days, we hire contractors to do all kinds of things on a military base: build things, maintain things, serve food, and apparently provide “security” to men with guns. Back in the old days, these are all things that were done by men and women (ok, mostly men) in uniform. For example, the Seabees. Their motto is still “We Build * We Fight.”
Instead, we now have a large complement of civilians who must be defended in a war zone. At least if the camp cook was a soldier, he could use his knife against an attacker on base just as easily as against a potato. Can you imagine General George S. Patton marching the Third Army 60 miles in 2 weeks with a bunch of Sodexo employees in tow? Neither can I.
Outsourcing is officially interfering with the ability of our Military to function in an actual war.
In Closing: Ok, here’s your assorted links on the government shutdown, the impending debt ceiling battle (Yoohoo Yoho! Making our bonds worthless would not help world markets!); ain’t that the truth; some obligatory NSA items; most of the time that would be a crime; the War on Drugs has been lost; school anti-bullying programs often have the opposite of the intended effect (how about the adults insist on everyone treating people with respect instead of some fancy-assed program?); don’t forget that the Supreme Court goes back to work today, shutdown or no; and I couldn’t make it up if I tried, Thanksgivukkah.