Abstract

Outsourcing Is Hell

The war on Iraq has made us all painfully aware of the Pentagon's growing reliance on private companies. Commercial firms have been hired to do everything from cooking meals to interrogating prisoners to providing security for US proconsul Paul Bremer. Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution estimates that for every ten troops on the ground in Iraq, there is one contract employee. Military outsourcing is nothing new. The latest wave of military privatization started in the first Bush Administration, when Defense Secretary Cheney asked Halliburton to study what it would cost to have a private company take charge of getting US forces overseas in a hurry. The Clinton Administration picked up where Bush/Cheney left off, hiring Halliburton--then run by Cheney--as the logistics arm for the war in Kosovo. The 1990s military outsourcing boom was driven by a combination of practicality and ideology. There is a reason that governments have historically maintained a monopoly over the use of force. Allowing private companies into the mix interferes with the ability of citizens to hold their government accountable for when and how force is used. Key members of Congress have started to press for action on this issue.