Privatize the
Empire
By: Michael Orange
Submitted 7/16/13 to VetSpeak
With
the patriotic Fourth of July and Memorial Day commemorations of our wars now
behind us, it is also a time to ponder the terrible costs of war. As an
ex-Marine who served in Vietnam, I know of them first hand. I offer a solution
that will halt injuries to our troops and please conservatives: Privatize the
Empire.
Conservatives
argue that the private sector is inherently more efficient than the public
sector. Since the Reagan Administration, they have stepped up efforts to
privatize aspects of the traditional “commons”—schools, airports, police and
fire services, parks, the postal service, health care, public works projects, prisons,
etc. War is no exception. Private contractors and mercenaries have consistently
outnumbered US troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I say outsource them
all so our troops can come home to defend this
country.
Obviously,
the government sector is inefficient at waging war. Our war on Iraq resulted in
a devastated corrupted country, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths,
millions of refugees, trillions of wasted dollars, and death and trauma to our
own troops. One in five Iraqi children dies due to disease, malnutrition, and
unsafe water.
A
private sector cost-benefit analysis would have dismissed
these wars against our enemy—al-Qaida (a private sector entity) as folly from
the start. The vast majority of al-Qaida leaders have been “fired” not
by the gross hammer of our military (which creates enemies faster than they can
kill them) but by the surgical precision of our intelligence services. Years
ago, Mafia kingpins dominated the FBI’s Most Wanted list, but we never invaded
Sicily under the slogan of “We're fighting them there, so we
don't have to fight them here.”
We
spend more on the military than all other countries combined. If the Pentagon
scaled back to what it needs for actual defense, imagine the savings! It could
sell most of the 737 bases we maintain in foreign countries and have a fire
sale worth trillions in surplus planes, ships, tanks, and explosives—everything
the oil industry, for example, would need to take over the job of securing
their private supply lines. Why waste time on diplomacy when the industry can afford
to buy whatever political influence it needs—just as it does here. I’m sure the
countries that have “our oil under their sand” would prefer to deal with CEOs directly
and avoid the risk of regime change by a fickle public sector middleman like a
US President.
Conservatives
say they hate public subsidies because they create an uneven playing field. The
oil industry is the richest in history yet the most subsidized. Why not eliminate
their dependency on the public dole and unleash their gung ho competitive
spirit in their own defense.
Conservative
journalist, Eric Margolis, writes of bin Laden, al-Qaida’s CEO, “He repeatedly
asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat
its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars
that would ultimately bankrupt them. [We] ... rushed right into bin Laden’s
trap.” So let’s get out! Privatize before they further radicalize.
The
hundreds of thousands of troops eligible for benefits already overwhelm our VA
hospitals. The Army Times reported
that, on average, 31 veterans a day try to kill themselves and 22 of them
succeed—a suicide every 65 minutes. Over the past few years, more troops have
died by their own hands than on our two main battlefields. Let’s privatize
before more troops are traumatized.
We
already privatized our elections and Congress. Why not the Empire?
As a Marine in Vietnam, Michael Orange experienced combat in numerous search-and-destroy missions and patrols during his tour of duty (1969-70). In 2001, he published a memoir of his experiences, Fire in theHole: A Mortarman in Vietnam. He teaches a class on the history of the Vietnam War at venues including the University of Minnesota's Compleat Scholar Program.
www.VetSpeak.org
