MILITARY CONTRACTORS

Over the past decade a lot of press has been devoted to the contractors supporting war and peacekeeping efforts. Most of this attention has been directed toward the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, or “KBR” as it’s known universally in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the military and contracting. The simple fact of the matter is that despite, or in spite of, the fact that Vice President Richard Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO before becoming the Vice President, KBR is the only company in the world today capable of handling the job that they perform.

There are many logistics, security, and service companies today that drool over the prospect of winning the sort of contracts that KBR have been awarded. Unfortunately for them, KBR got there “the firstest with the mostest.” When the US military of President Bill Clinton was looking for civilian assistance for the International Force (IFOR)/Stabilization Force (SFOR) mission in Bosnia, it was the deep pockets of KBR parent Halliburton that put up the money for then small KBR to perform the mission. And perform they did.

KBR’s business acumen and expertise built a relatively small subsidiary ready to fill the needs of the Clinton Administration’s military requirements into the powerhouse company it is today serving the military of the Bush Administration. Ironic, no? But, no matter the history, what can be said is that little KBR has learned what they needed to learn, built up a base of expertise second to none on this earth, and has performed quite admirably for America’s fighting men and women, and for its stockholders. THAT is how American capitalism works, and how it should.

In fact, the only organization in the world today outside Halliburton that is capable of performing the job they are doing is the US military. And despite what some in Congress and the media may say, outside of the US military only Halliburton’s KBR can ensure the successful performance of the support they perform under one umbrella. KBR trucks move cargo, KBR employees cook and serve the meals, KBR builds the infrastructure. The only thing that they don’t do is provide security.

And there’s the rub.

Contracting in support of the US military clearly has its place. Port-a-john maintenance and service is clearly a non-military profession that can be clearly filled by contractors. There are other jobs that could be filled with civilian personnel, but those jobs are highly specialized – manufacturers’ representatives and the like. But, the wholesale use of contractors is clearly becoming detrimental to the ability of the nation to fight wars.

This is a lesson that has been learned (and unfortunately forgotten) over and over by this nation and others. Rome’s army was essentially a mercenary and contractor army by the end of that empire and, with no loyalty to the command or nation, Rome’s army and navy fought poorly and the nation was lost. All the while Rome’s citizens all felt that serving in the military, and therefore defending the nation, was beneath them. Their job was commerce, and, of course, participating in the public debate of how to defend the nation.

America’s Continental Army utilized contract personnel, a large group being mule skinners and teamsters, early in our War of Independence to transport its equipment and goods. Those same contractors turned and ran when gunfire began. They were concerned that their investment in wagons, horses and mules, and equipment would be lost. Why should they care? The Continental Army was a pack of rebels to the British Crown, and if they lost, the contractors and their equipment could find other work. It wasn’t worth losing their property over. The Continental Army soon formed its own units to handle its cargo and transportation needs. And in a pinch, those Continental Army transporters could be put into the front lines to fight.

In World War II, US marines and sailors at Wake Island were assaulted by Japanese forces immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack. This was a full-scale air and sea attack by elite Imperial Japanese troops, steeled by years of fighting in China and other places in Asia. There were numerous civilian construction contractors on the island who soon found themselves armed and in the front lines with their military employers, totally ill-equipped and ill-trained to fight the battle-hardened invaders. Wake was lost and the tragic loss of those civilian construction contractors and the manner in which they were lost led to the formation of the US Navy’s Seabees.

History has taught that trained warriors are needed to fight wars. As the previous three examples of history demonstrate, contractors have not the training, expertise, or loyalty to properly function in a combat environment. And they can quit at any time. They are not required to have any loyalty to anyone but themselves and their wallets.

In Iraq and Afghanistan only specific contractors (those hired by such entities as the State Department) are allowed to carry weapons. Most contractors – those performing vehicle and aircraft maintenance, cooking and serving food, driving civilian trucks – are unarmed and are REQUIRED to be unarmed in the war zone! They are protected by soldiers and other contractors. In a fight, they are totally useless. And, just in case you didn’t know, there are big fights going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, the largest US base is Logistics Support Activity (LSA) Anaconda, a large former-Iraqi Air Force base about forty miles north of Baghdad close by the Tigris River. Of all the personnel there, about one-in-three is a civilian. This ratio places an undue burden on the military personnel there.

The major reason behind civilian military contracting has been to place the soldier in jobs that the military specifically does well, such as killing the enemy and “blowing things up,” as GIs jokingly say. But at LSA Anaconda, with one-third of the personnel unarmed civilians, the responsibility of securing the perimeter and providing security FOR 100% OF THE PERSONNEL falls on the GI. Nearly all this duty falls on soldiers whose jobs are to perform paperwork, maintenance, transport, and any number of myriad jobs that a soldier may be required to perform in their regular duties.

Soldiers perform guard and security duty twenty-four hours at a time. Once their duty is complete, they are (generally) released from all duty for another twenty-four hours to rest and recuperate. So the unit loses the services of that soldier for two days. Now, normally a unit will have five, ten or fifteen soldiers on details on any given day. That of course means that there are the same number of soldiers resting from duty the day before. In many units this can be as much as ten percent of the unit! These soldiers are not maintaining equipment, repairing parts, performing maintenance, or doing any of the jobs they are regularly required to do. This burden would be reduced by fifty percent at LSA Anaconda if all those civilian contractor positions were filled by soldiers! The WHOLE burden of security falls squarely on the soldier.

There are other issues involved, too. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the rules of war as laid down by the Geneva Convention consider contractors as mercenaries, and as such are not covered by these rules. The military’s jurisdiction is non-existent. In one case in Bosnia, a contractor was found to be running a prostitution ring with some locals and a colleague. He was fired and shipped home. The Bosnians had no clear jurisdiction, nor did the US judiciary. The military could do nothing. A soldier would have been subject to military prosecution.
This is just one example of where the military and the contracting worlds collide.

In Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and elsewhere, soldiers are required to wear their uniform and to wear certain equipment. Additionally, they lug around weapons, ammo and other items as required. Contractors technically are supposed to mimic the requirements of the military, except of course the weapons, but they feel no real need to do so. It aggravates soldiers to no end when in 130 degree heat they are wearing helmets, body armor, full uniform, weapons, ammo, canteens, and whatever else they may need, and then they see a contractor in sorts, a t-shirt and a ball cap with his helmet and body armor slung over his shoulder, “because it’s just too darn hot to be wearing that stuff.” Soldiers are being held to high professional and personal standards, and the very people who they are told are working for them, and who the soldier must protect, flaunts his freedom. It breeds a lot of resentment.

And the single greatest injustice to the soldier is the pay differential. A contractor who never leaves the base and does nothing but maintenance, may make twice-or-three-or-four times the pay of a soldier performing the exact same job. But, that soldier has to perform guard duty on the perimeter.

The bottom line is this. War is the business of the military. Contractors are mercenaries and should not be needed in a nation of citizen soldiers, the standards of which are the highest in the world. Contractors end up reducing the fighting power of the very people they support and are useless to those people if the situation were to spiral into a real fight. We need to keep contractors out of our military operations and get more troops into the military.

Period.