Contractors behaving badly

By Lindsay Beyerstein

In the wake of the guard scandal at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, a security contractor explains in strikingly frank terms why these large private security contracts in war zones are so predictably mismanaged:

The main reason why managing these contracts is so difficult is that it is impossible to stay ahead of the stupidity curve your men will generate. There is no way to anticipate it because some of these guys do the most unbelievably stupid things sober; add alcohol and the potential for Darwin Award level stupidity goes up exponentially. In the military I knew my Marines well because we spent so much time together – often in prolonged field exercises. Your average young enlisted Marine has the ability to do stupid things too but they fall into an easily anticipated set of behaviors which savvy leadership can recognize and at times circumvent. Not true with contractors – some of stories I have heard are amazing.

Lynch puts his finger on a structural problem with private security contractors. His Marines weren't necessarily smarter or saner than his contractors, but at least in the Marine Corps he wasn't dealing with a shifting cast of free agents drifting from job to job.

Comments

[Jordan]

Check out the video about security contractors and haliburton workers confessions. Google The new american century and start watching after 70th minute. There are videos of british soldiers beating civilians but the voice and laughter of a camerman will chill your spine. Videos of contractors driving on the roads and shooting other cars randomly.

[russell]

Combine:

• armed people in hostile, potential combat situations
  
• without the discipline of a military chain of command or the UCMJ
  
• with a primary motivation of lots of money
  

Result: stupid bloody ugly clusterf****.

As night follows day.

[Uzza]

We'll continue to have these problems as long as we subscribe to the meme that good people do good things and bad people do bad things.
The fact is good people, when put in a bad situation, do bad things, as per the Lucifer effect.

[sekaijin]

Why don't we call these people for what they really are in effect - mercenaries.

[Harald Korneliussen]

Uzza: True enough, but some people seek out bad situations.

A recent case here in Norway, you've probably never heard of it but it's the only thing they write about here, is a couple of guys who are jailed in Congo for killing their driver.
They were in the international battalion, but they got asked to leave for trying to recruit for mercenary - or private security, if you prefer - missions in Africa. Then for some reason they found themselves in the middle of Congo (a pretty stupid place to be without good reason, especially when you don't speak French!), their driver turned up dead, and two Africans who were in the car at the time accused them of killing him. Then they were arrested, and on the phone cam of one of them, there was a picture of one of them grinning and giving a thumbs-up as he wiped blood off the front seat of the victim's car.

Still, on the right wing, lots of people here refuse to believe that they did it. "In Congo, they lie all day long", you know.

[Diane]

Perhaps that is what we get for going to war illegally and impetuously.

We reap what we sow and the bush administration did this for the oil and for what the businesses could get out of fleecing this country.
When companies are not held to the rule of law, very bad things happen. Just like administrations.
Everybody should be accountable for their actions, no one should get a free pass, EVER!

[Jordan]

Now consider the possibilities of those mercenaries returning home from war, or if the war ends they all will come home. Add to that a warning from DHS about right wing nuts trying to recruit returning veterans for their ends and you get an explosive mix.

[wonkie]

Somethings just are not done best when the morive is profit. Private enterprise quite frequently doesn't work as well as government programs.

[mutt]

theres another aspect of this i shove in wingnut vets faces. (Mercs are the "free market" to the buffoons) When stuff gets REAL dangerous- like running supplies into an isolated, besieged "oil spot"- local stronghold-manned by US soldiers, and mercenaries are supposedly running the supplies- those supplies wont be run.
While fellow soldiers might think twice, but they will go.

Reliance on mercenaries is getting our soldiers killed, and will result in more getting killed. And we've already seen our Marines used as intruments of revenge for the killing of 4 mercs outside Falloujah, from which much evil flowed.
Swear an oath to defend the Consitution, and end up avenging Rummy's mercs.
Where is Rummy, these days?

[someotherdude]

mutt,

I don't think they really care.

[Nombrilisme Vide]

[/tagclose]

*sigh*

Oh, for a better class of trolls...

[liberal japonicus]

You know, when I first saw this comment (and I half suspect this is someone playing at being d^dave, cause of the multiple similar comments in the Imaginary Enemies thread seems way too much like a please ban me plea) I am sure that there were no italics. I could have missed them, but I don't think I did.

[Jesurgislac]

I reported the first comment I saw using Stuttering Dave's pseud, to the kitten, noting that I really didn't think this was Stuttering Dave: the comments addressed directly to Lindsay were so far over a line that (to be best of my knowledge) D'Dave has not crossed. I think ObWing just got hit by a troll again.