For All Those Who Think Blackwater Won't Be Around Much Longer
The evidence continues to mount: Blackwater, that is, the reliance on contractors to do what should be done by the military, is the direct result of the Pentagon’s, or White House’s disastrous federal budget policies.
As my previous post on this first pointed out a few weeks ago, having a lower-than-needed number of active duty troops, National Guard, and reserves to keep spending down so the deficit would look better literally made private contractors the only alternative.
But anyone who thought this would end soon and that Blackwater and other contractors would fade into the woodwork are wrong. As Blue Girl points out, even if the military wanted to increase the number of active duty troops, it won’t be able to do so because it’s having a hard time getting sufficient number of people to enlist.
This will almost certainly force the Pentagon to increase pay and benefits to get people to join and pay higher bonuses to get recruits to join sooner. It will also have to pat higher bonuses to get troops to re-up when their current obligation ends.
That means a huge increase in personnel costs for the military. It also means big increases in pay costs for domestic agencies because civilian pay is typically tied to military pay.
Can you say increased federal spending?
There is probably also a
There is probably also a sense in which creating a high-pay alternative to military service has skewed the pay calculation for soldiers. People who are willing to go in harm's way can triple their pay by leaving the US military to go to Black Water. So we have fewer people willing to go in harm's way US military uniform. The obvious solution is to force the genie back into the bottle. We can either pay soldiers out of the budget through the US military or do it through Black Water. Black Water costs more. Black Water presents problems of soverienty and legitimacy. Why not just decide to let US soldiers do our soldiering and stop paying Black Water?