Web Letters: Outsourcing the War

I am writing to state unequivocally, the there must be some sort of complicity with respect to the use of a for-profit private mercenary army and a for-profit war services support industry in the United States government. It seems horribly and embarrassingly clear that the failure to act on this glaring and immoral outrage, and the absence in this country of any real and determined effort by the press or members of civil government to expose and end war-profiteering suggests an emotional, moral and intellectual bankruptcy as well as a complicity that will be nearly as remarkable in the annals of the history of this country as the whole-sale and duplicitous slaughter which ensued Manifest Destiny, the use and justification of slavery, the multitudes of bloody covert and overt "foreign interventions" perpetrated by this country across the globe and all the other infamies carried out with virtually no shame across the brief span of years which comprise the making of the American Empire.

I have to ask, Who are these inhuman cowardly people, as aggressive and hungry for profitable barbarity now as ever they were then?.

Lack of concern for the depravity of Blackwater, Triple Canopy, KBR et al are a frightful manifestation of the collective consciousness of the American Polity in the justification of American global rapacity, where we not only now take the war to the supposed "enemy" but many thousands at home make an extremely handsome profit, and perpetuate the domestic dialogue and use of aggression as a national interest policy feature to boot--with impunity: "no negotiation and no quarter".

I believe it was Eisenhauer who suggested we beware the Military-Industrial Complex. Our country is now run by it, and it has become a species of patriotism that it should be so, where to question it is as though to invite scorn, even surveillance. I'm sure I digress but how is it possible not to, amidst the corporate malfeasance sowing havoc in this country and abroad while the United States Congress sleeps, politely deferring action; where there is debate about oversight, it is spuriously accused of "engaging in politics."

The least we can do is to end war profiteering--a relative no-brainer?

Lawrence Curtin

New Paltz, NY