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Deniable, Disposable Casualties
Something was missing from my local Memorial Day parade.
There were soldiers, sailors, World War II veterans, firefighters, Girl Scouts, soccer players, marching bands, flag-draped floats and even a festive contingent from the Board of Education. But there was no float memorializing the hundreds of civilian contractors killed in Iraq.
It's fashionable to look down on the civilian contractors employed by firms such as Halliburton and Blackwater. When contractors make the news, it's usually in the context of stories about waste and fraud in reconstruction or service contracts, or human rights abuses committed by private security contractors. So when civilian contractors die in Iraq, most of us don't waste many tears. These are guys who went to Iraq out of sheer greed, lured by salaries far higher than those received by military personnel, right? If they get themselves killed, who cares?
But we should all care. Not because it's our patriotic duty to support the lucrative corporate empires that employ the thousands of civilian contractors in Iraq, but because most of the men and women employed by these corporate giants are in Iraq at our government's behest.
They drive trucks containing supplies for troops in the field. They operate dining halls at military bases, guard buildings, install and maintain computer and telephone systems and train local officials. They're part of our war — and just like those who serve in the military, they pay for our government's mistakes with their health and their lives.
In Iraq, civilian contractors form a vast parallel army. In the Persian Gulf War, fewer than 10,000 civilian contractors accompanied more than 500,000 military personnel. In Iraq today, an estimated 126,000 Defense Department civilian contractors support 145,000 troops. Thousands more civilians work under contract to other U.S. government agencies.
A combination of poor record-keeping, corporate stonewalling and the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy has prevented even the Government Accountability Office from getting solid numbers on civilian contractors in Iraq. Prime contractors subcontract out much of their work to other companies, which in turn subcontract out much of their work to other companies, which in turn … you get the idea.
Add in foreign corporations and the offshore subsidiaries of the U.S. giants and you get a game of corporate hot potato in which no one knows, at the end of the day, whose potato it was to begin with. In February, Congress heard testimony from the families of four Blackwater employees killed in Fallouja in March 2004. Their work had something to do with a contract relating to dining facilities at Army bases, but as Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) complained, "We still don't know for sure the identity of the prime contractor under which the four Blackwater employees were working."
Only a fraction of the civilian contractors in Iraq fit the stereotype of the gun-toting, muscle-bound mercenary. Most contractors from the U.S. are blue-collar men and women: truck drivers, mechanics, IT specialists, former soldiers and cops, drawn to Iraq by the prospect of tax-free earnings that dwarf what they could make at home.
You could call it greed, but you'd be overlooking the economic insecurity and hardship that lie behind many decisions to sign up with companies such as DynCorp or KBR: the overdue mortgage, the unpaid debt from a spouse's surgery, the dead-end local jobs. And plenty of contractors also want to "do their bit," but for one reason or another — age, health — joining the military isn't an option for them.
Just like the troops they support, civilian contractors are dying by the score in Iraq. After the New York Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Labor acknowledged 917 deaths, including at least 146 during the first quarter of 2007. Another 12,000 have been wounded or hurt, and those numbers almost certainly underestimate the true toll.
When they're injured or killed, contractors or their families often find it difficult to obtain healthcare or compensation. The industry is poorly monitored and regulated, and some contractors have alleged that their employers actively misrepresented employment conditions and benefits.
Congress is considering a range of legislation designed to increase contractor accountability and oversight. That's long overdue. The administration's heavy reliance on civilian contractors represents an unprecedented privatization of war that, if unchecked, could prove lethal for American democracy. The privatization of war hides crucial foreign policy decisions behind a thick corporate smokescreen, gives corporate giants an incentive to see the Iraq war prolonged and masks the true human costs of the war.
Contractors are deniable and disposable. They don't get military salutes at their funerals, and they're not invited to march in Memorial Day parades. But like the 3,474 U.S. troops killed so far in Iraq, they too are casualties of this seemingly endless war.
© 2007 The Los Angeles Times
10 Comments so far
Show AllI agree with tj and jbs. The Bush administration and their corporate cronies keep trying to compare the contractor situation in Iraq with the aftermath of WWII and the Korean War with regards to US firms helping to support the military and help rebuild the war-torn nations. However, they conveniently forget that most of the workers hired after those conflicts were from the local national population, not imported from the US and other nations having nothing to do with the war. In Iraq, one of the greatest incentives to join the insurgency is the fact that so many willing and able people can't get any kind of work to survive this debacle that the Bush and his ignorant, shortsighted, greedy neocons have created.
"You could call it greed, but you'd be overlooking the economic insecurity and hardship that lie behind many decisions to sign up with companies such as DynCorp or KBR: the overdue mortgage, the unpaid debt from a spouse's surgery, the dead-end local jobs. And plenty of contractors also want to "do their bit," but for one reason or another — age, health — joining the military isn't an option for them."
About 50,000 of the contractors are paramilitary. That is more than a small fraction. They are hired guns, killers, mass murderers - nothing else.
As for the other 75,000 hired support personnel: to excuse them or to even suggest that they should be saluted in Memorial Day parades is as ludicrous as it is sickening. They may or may not have economic reasons for volunteering to work with the war-mongering contracting companies.
Well, millions of the rest of us aint in very good financial shape either, yet we don't volunteer to go thousands of miles to participate in supporting mass murder, slaughter, theft and destruction.
Not to mention the fact that these contractors are totally distorting what is left of the Iraqi economy and stealing what little paying work there is in that beleaguered nation.
This article, soaking in crocodile tears, makes me nauseous.
tj june
well said. i too have problems with contractors being placed in the same boat as the military and civilians victims of this occupation.
A free and democratic country should never hire mercenaries to fight wars. If you've read Machiavelli, you know that Mercenaries are extremely dangerous to their employers-- often mercenaries mount successful coups.
Given the behavior of Congress around the most recent Iraq war funding bill, I'd say their coup is going just fine.
What I have in common with men and women of the legitimate U.S. armed forces is my love of the U.S. constitution. I have no such bond with the Mercenaries. As far as I'm concerned, they are a threat to the constitution and the country I know and love.
It is certainly unfortunate that nearly 700 of these contractors have died in the GWOT so far, but that is for their families and friends to memorialize. The Nation, a nation of laws based on the constitution, was ill-served by their careers.
The contractors' message to our legitimate soliders was:
Serving the U.S. through the regular armed forces, dedicated to the U.S. Constitution, is for low-paid chumps and losers.
The contractors' message to Iraqi civilians was:
The U.S. operates outside all laws.
Suppose they turn on their sponsors... a coup to end a coup style?
The contractors are there because of the conservative penchant for privatising as many military/government functions as possible. The Bushies have done this so that they can take billions of American tax-payer dollars and reward pro-Bush, pro-Republican individuals and corporations who have demonstrated their loyality to Bush and Republican causes. It's a form of embezzlement concealed by the fog of war and the Repubs and Bush are getting away with it. The truck drivers are expendable pawns. The Bushite corporation big shots are safe and secure and cashing in to the tune of billions.
The contractors are there because of the conservative penchant for privatizing as many military/government functions as possible. The Bushies have done this so that they can take billions of American tax-payer dollars and reward pro-Bush, pro-Republican individuals and corporations who have demonstrated their loyality to Bush and Republican causes. It's a form of embezzlement concealed by the fog of war and the Repubs and Bush are getting away with it. The truck drivers are expendable pawns. The Bushite corporation big shots are safe and secure and cashing in to the tune of billions.
There are some other sources of hidden casualtie here, besides the deaths of allies of the US government serving in Iraq.
The US employs a significant number of guest workers that are working directly or indirectly for US firms-but aren't US nationals or citizens. These folks can perform much the same labor as US contractors-but don't get seen as "US" deaths-even if it is US tax dollars that paid for them to come to Iraq. It is quite common in the Middle East for nationals of South Korea or the Phillipines to be working in various positions-particularly in the construction industry.
I'd look at all foreign deaths in Iraq to get a comprehensive picture here. I suspect that there is more yet to find here.
If we Americans are going to pay for the war, we should be required to at least see some of the pictures...
WAR PICTURES
Pictures of Destruction and Civilian Victims of the Anglo-American Aggression in Iraq.
These photos are only of a very tiny fraction of the thousands of Iraqi Civilian Victims who have been terrorised, humiliated, injured, maimed
and killed through British and American bombing of civilian areas in various cities of Iraq.
Due to insecurity, independent reporters could
not and still can not reach many areas to photograph and report the atrocities. Several independent reporters and journalists were deliberately bombed to prevent them reporting the atrocities.
WARNING: SOME OF THESE PICTURES ARE NOT SUITIBLE FOR SMALL CHILDREN AND THOSE WITH WEAK HEARTS
Robert Fisk:
http://snipurl.com/h6tm
Mind Prod:
http://snipurl.com/h6tp
They didn't have any eight foot by four foot flag draped floats in that parade, perhaps a parade of 3500 of them going by like a marching band, followed by the tens of thousands of wounded, might have put Memorial day in it's real perspective.
And yes the thousands of contractor dead, to say nothing of the Millions of Iraqi, and Afghani, civilians dead, (shot outright, or killed slower and more indirectly) might be spared a tear or two, as they have run out of their own.