Misleading Reports on Contractors, but Still Bad

by: Richard Allen Smith

Wed Sep 02, 2009 at 12:55:15 PM EDT

I've come across a few articles today about contractor levels in Iraq and particularly Afghanistan, which seem to be misleading. I don't think this is malicious, but rather the product of writers not fully understanding the roles contractors play in a combat zone. However, even when the story is viewed through the correct lens, I don't like it.

First, there is this:

Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.
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On a superficial level, the shift means that most of those representing the United States in the war will be wearing the scruffy cargo pants, polo shirts, baseball caps and other casual accouterments favored by overseas contractors rather than the fatigues and flight suits of the military.

More fundamentally, the contractors who are a majority of the force in what has become the most important American enterprise abroad are subject to lines of authority that are less clear-cut than they are for their military colleagues.

What is clear, the report says, is that when contractors for the Pentagon or other agencies are not properly managed - as when civilian interrogators committed abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or members of the security firm Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad - the American effort can be severely undermined.

What isn't said here, but what I think is implied, is that these are almost all private security contractors (i.e. Blackwater Xe) which isn't the case. The overwhelming majority of contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq are there to conduct support operations, such as running post offices, performing maintenance and cooking and serving food. The article does devote one sentence to the support work before beginning again to discuss Blackwater. However, the fact that not all the contractors are mercenaries doesn't exactly make it okay.

All of us who have spent time in theater understand the pay gap between contractors, who make well into the six-figure range, and uniformed troops. Contractors are being over-payed to do things like cook meals, maintain communications equipment, fix vehicles, operate logistics warehouses and a host of other tasks when those jobs could be just as easily be done by Soldiers who are trained to do the same job, like an Army (or whichever other branch) cook, mechanic, communications specialist, or supply specialist. We could even give our troops significant raises or increased hostile fire compensation and still have them doing their job for a lower cost.

Not only that, but I'd be willing to bet the quality would be much better. A radio maintainer or vehicle mechanic in uniform knows that his buddy's lives depend on his work.  He is more likely to put in the extra effort and late hours to get equipment running and running reliably than a contractor who has no incentive to go above and beyond his or her contract.

Then, there is a third problem I have with private support contractors, and it mirrors the main problem with mercenary contractors.  Unless they are contracted by the Department of Defense, they are not subject to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows prosecution of civilians who are attached to military forces.  While we don't have to worry about cooks and vehicle maintenance contractors abusing interrogation subjects, we do have to consider crimes that could be committed against their peers. What if a contracted cook in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad sexually assaults a foreign service officer? Unless I am mistaken, there would be no jurisdiction under which to prosecute the offender.

Simply put, having more contractors than uniformed troops on the ground in a combat zone is unacceptable. We need to ween ourselves off the use of contract labor in combat all together.