I believe there may be a case to be made about these guys not fulfilling something that I think is vitally important. That would be the presence of an undeniable combatant. Are they wearing recognizable war zone uniforms?
I have a big beef with people who don’t identify themselves on the battlefield for what they are, namely a bonified combatant that is not a terrorist.
I don’t think these guys are terrorists, but I can’t bitch and moan about not being able to tell combatant from citizen on the terrorist side, if our own team sometimes doesn’t dress as a bonified battle combatants.
Other than that, I do see some issues. I’m not all that bothered by this. I am willing to accept that perhaps I should be. As of this moment I am not, but I could be moved by the right argument.
As long as these men conduct themselves by the same rules as one of the members of our armed forces, as much as that can be accomplished, I don’t have a problem with it.
It’s another way of outsourcing. We may save money by doing it. These guys must be paid rather well, so I’m not sure that’s true. I would be very miffed if I thought our troops were paid X and these guys got X plus.
That may be the case too.
The thing is these Blackwater guys are paid much better than the military.
State Department was paying them $1 billion for security and only 1,000 of them were in country.
There are a lot of contractors that work with the military so it would be hard to get rid of all of them.
But they are an easy scapegoat for those who want to attack the war without being unpatriotic.
Blackwater took 41 casualties in Iraq but no one they were guarding were harmed at any time.