Playing by Different Rules: the Military and Private Security Contractors

Be warned. HP posts aren't supposed to go long, especially not long quotes, but the following is a three-page quote. It is taken from the book Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War, released last week.

The author is Matt Gallagher, a former junior Army officer who served in the armored cavalry. He served 15 months in Iraq and ran the popular military blog Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal.

He has some interesting perspective on the impact of private security contractors. Private military and security contractor advocates often say that the contractors are motivated by the same sense of patriotism one finds among active duty military personnel. While that may be true for many individuals one can't always say the same for the companies they work for. That is not a slam on the companies, although some deserve it, but just a factual statement of reality. By definition the bottom line of a PMSC is the monetary bottom line. The same is not true for regular military forces.

While, as Gallagher acknowledges, "the majority of these security contractors doubtlessly executed their duties professionally and honorably" that is not to say they don't cause problems. Here is how one former lieutenant saw it.

Critics called them war profiteers and vigilantes. Proponents labeled them patriots vital to the Iraq War effort. My interactions with them varied sharply, sometimes evoking my wrath, sometimes invoking my gratitude. Private contractors proliferated in the sands of Iraq, throughout the war, and during my time there, they numbered approximately 180,000 in total-about 15,000 more personnel than Coalition forces had serving during the surge's peak. Of that number, only 20,000 or so served as private security guards, but thanks to the company Blackwater's infamous time in theater, they became the public face for contractors in Iraq.

In his presidential farewell address to the nation in 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned against such privatization and development of the military-industrial complex.

Almost fifty years later, half the globe away from America, it appeared that his words were proving both prophetic and fruitless. One couldn't walk a half mile from Camp Taji or any of the combat outposts without seeing a sign of Halliburton's lovechild KBR-from the trailers we lived in, to the electric outlets we plugged into, to the Porta-Johns we crapped in. In theory, I detested our military's reliance on civilian enterprises and their nine-to-five work mentality. In practice, I happily ate the chocolate ice cream the army never would have provided and based in air-conditioning the military probably would have fucked up somehow.

Just as with soldiers there were good civilians and bad civilians. Almost all of both qualified as former or retired military. The good ones understood their job existed to help soldiers, to facilitate whatever facet of the war was tasked to them, and they didn't pretend they still served in the armed forces. The bad ones viewed their job as a perk to retiring from the military service; constantly pointed out how much money they made than the soldiers actually fighting the war; and only cared about their little slice of the Green Machine, big picture be damned.

Bitching about contractors and their exploits in Iraq felt as natural to soldiers as sleeping and smoking. But outside of a few typical and mundane interactions I never go too fired up about them; their presence in our brushfire war seemed natural, given our postmodern republic's interpretation of free markets and privatized industry. The military-industrial complex had evolved into a monster with thousands and thousands of money-udders for contractors to suckle off of, and I certainly had no right to call foul.

Further, I just didn't see how the daymare of an army of hired guns could ever come to fruition in America-from my perspective, the military presence seemed too strong and influential. One day in the fall of 2008, though, I experienced some of the pitfalls of the growing reliance on the private security forces, albeit, on a negligible scale.

At about nine in the morning, when walking back to my room from the showers at JSS Istalquaal, I spotted something odd; a fleet of up-armored suburbans parked in our motor pool between our Strykers and Humvees. Mildly intrigued, I stopped to watch a group of tall, white, large-chested men walk over to the Iraqi police side of the JSS. Most sported thick, lumberjack beards and baseball caps and wore various mishmashes of military and police gear. I stood a good two hundred meters away from them, but it appeared that they carried a variety of assault rifles as well. One of them looked over at me, so I gave a little wave, while holding my hygiene kit and shower towel and wearing flip-flops. He didn't wave back. Once they disappeared through the IP gate, I continued to my room. When I walked by the motor pool again a few hours later, I noticed the up-armored suburbans were gone. I never did learn exactly why they came to our JSS, although Captain Frowny-Face thought some State Department official had arrived for a meeting that morning.

At that time, I assume they were Blackwater (now known as Xe) personnel, but they could just as likely have been from DynCorp or Triple Canopy, two other private security firms employed by the U.S. State department.

I didn't give the unknown men, with lumberjack beards and safari bush vests another thought until two days later, when Lieutenant Rant walked into the TOC.

"Some Iraqi just came in and said we had destroyed his car," he told me.

"Oh yeah?" I was playing a helicopter video game on a computer, and Lieutenant Rant's story didn't sound like anything out of the ordinary. Iraqis had proven very adept at concocting ways to elicit money from us, and this tale lacked all kinds of creativity points.

"Yeah, but he said it wasn't us, it was Americans in trucks or something, who didn't wear normal uniforms. He said it happened right on Dover too. You hear anything about that?"

I paused my game and looked up. No, I replied, "but I did see some Blackwater dudes here two days ago. When did this supposedly happen?"

"Two days ago around noon." Still standing and leaning against a nearby pilar, Lieutenant Rant shook his head. "He said there was a traffic jam ahead and the trucks were honking and weaving around like mad men and plowed straight into him going pretty fast. He said his wife had to go to the hospital, and his car is completely totaled. He brought in a photo of a busted car, but that could be from anything."

I arched an eyebrow. "That sucks. Think it's true?"

Lieutenant Rant shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? He wouldn't be the first Iraqi to lie about this, but then again, it wouldn't be the first time those security guys destroyed an Iraqi's personal property. He said they barely stopped, but told him to come here for reimbursement."

"Hah!" This story became more believable by the minute. "What did you do?"

The only thing I could do. I listened to him for 45 minutes because no one else would. Then I gave him a claims card, showed him how to fill it out, and told him to go to Camp Taji with it. Hopefully, they'll pay him there."

"Yeah," I said, "hopefully." I paused and gave a fist pump. "In other news I'm up to 6,000 points on the helicopter game"

"You bastard!"

While the alleged car wreck pin comparison to some of the greater private security firm scandals of the Iraq War--like the Blackwater Baghdad shootings in Nisoor Square on September 16, 2007, when seventeen Iraqi civilians lost their lives-it served as a firsthand display for me that contractors played by different rules than those of us on active duty. While the majority of these security contractors doubtlessly executed their duties professionally and honorably, the stark lack of accountability after a crisis continued to plague the firms. Because they were beholden to their respective companies rather than to a nation or a national purpose (like the Iraqi counterinsurgency), private security firms in the Iraq War incarnated President Eisenhower's worst fears. As with any private enterprise, they were motivated to protect money and protect their investments, even at the expense of more ambitious and loftier goals. Providing for oneself and one's family definitely qualifies as an honorable intention for an individual, but that can't be said for an organization as a whole. While the military had its own share of scandals over the course of the war, the institution itself held grander ambitions and higher purposes than financial benefit. The same cannot be said of the private security firms. It showed
(pp. 222-224)

 

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