Opportunity Costs for Deploying PMCs Robert Greenwald’s documentary film, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteer, highlights how the private military contractors (PMCs) make the profit out of the Iraq War, and visualizes how the motive of profit-oriented PMCs has a negative impact on U.S. image. The film shows interviews of former PMCs employees and their families, Iraqi civilians, U.S. military staff, and more. The question has raised that how the U.S. government solve such tragedy and at the same time to fulfill its needy of manpower in Iraq. Accountability is not the only significant opportunity cost of U.S. government deploying PMCs to Iraq, but also losing oligopoly leverage of traditional military in the labor market of the business of …show more content…
The offer of PMCs is irresistible that U.S. government could save time and money from producing skilled military personnel by simply hiring professionals in the market. The film has spotlighted how U.S. government’s investment on PMCs turn into irony in terms of accountability. Greenwald made the case by informing the evidence of unskilled interpreters of Titan Corporation jeopardizing the military missions; and Halliburton proving unclean water for the U.S. soldiers. The most significant indication is the outbreak of Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which demolishes the image of U.S in the international community. In addition, the Pentagon had found evidence that Halliburton overcharged 1 billion dollars to the taxpayers. The question is how responsible PMCs are in handling such crisis? Don Mayer stated that employees of PMCs are not under direct supervision of U.S. military, and the crime that employees commit is a matter of his or her employer (5). And, Mayer also pointed out that there is no clear jurisdiction in U.S. court, Iraq court, and International tribunal to serve justice for the victims (5). The United States government could have a higher level of transparency and accountability with its own traditional military because the military is subject to U.S. government and international law. Indeed, accountability is the U.S. opportunity
The case study The Blast in Centralia no. 5: A mine Disaster No One Stopped is a useful lens through which to identify potential pitfalls for national security organizations. The most powerful lessons that ought to be learned by the case study are twofold. First, political interference in the work of governmental organizations can lead to dysfunction and mission failure. Second, the failure to conduct independent oversight over a governmental organization—especially when its performance has been openly questioned—permits that dysfunction to continue unabated.
When political leaders frame an unjust war as a morally just war, though, these same soldiers might have second thoughts about their decision to become part of a military machine that is prosecuting an unjust war because their leaders lacked the authority to absolve them from their personal accountability. In this regard, McMahan makes the interesting point that, “What unjust combatants are commanded to do as agents of the state – fight, in an unjust war – is not something that their state, or its leaders, have a claim right to do, or to delegate to others”
“The Price of Military Folly.” U.S. News Online. 1996. 10 April 2000 . Robinson, Linda.
Denise Grady’s (2006) article sound a strong wake up call for the American government and for the American public to re-evaluate their guiding principles towards war in Iraq and the continued presence of the American soldiers in the Iraqi soil. Grady delineated the enormous damages the war had costs in not only monetary terms but also the future of thousands of promising young and talented men and women sent in the Iraq War; that had no clear benefits to them or the American people.
The three films that I chose for this final project are; Fahrenheit 9/11, CSI season 1 episode 22, and West Wing Season 3 episode 1. These films are connected because they focus on different aspects associated with the attacks on September 11, 2001. Fahrenheit 9/11 is connected to the current topic because its main plot point follows Michael Moore’s narrative of blaming George W. Bush, our president on September 11 2001, for the acts of terrorism. Moreover, the film examines step by step the failures of President Bush before, during, and after the falling of the Twin Towers. The CSI episode took a somber and realistic tone airing an episode that featured Taylor expaining that his wife died when the towers fell. Furthermore, The West Wing,
Veteran defense analyst and AEI resident fellow Thomas Donnelly wants to know the answers to the questions behind Operation: Iraqi Freedom. He states that “More than a year after President George W. Bush declared ‘mission accomplished’ in the invasion of Iraq, a fuller victory is yet to be won. This is in part, because a fuller understanding of the war itself remains elusive.” This elusiveness is the biggest mystery of the war and because of it four key observations have emerged. Also these observations emerge after an examination of the conventional invasion of Iraq, the resulting counterinsurgency campaign and their broader significance for the global war on terrorism.
The United States “hands have not always been clean” (Landau 1999, page 16). It seems that as time passes more and more of past United States foreign policy actions are discovered to have been a cause of corruption rather than security. Recently numbers of declassified documents show the fraud of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It is apparent that Kissinger directly assisted General Augusto Pinochet into power in Chile and despite his knowledge of Pinochet’s human rights violations he deliberately ensured his stay in power (Landau 1999; page 16). Currently the legal action being taken against Henry Kissinger must be taken seriously to show current United States officials, the cruelty of our nations past and how we are guilty of initiating and helping a brutal dictatorship for sixteen years.
Poladian shows us the real-life situation. The things American has changed in 14 years. Poladian is only an American citizen and one of the reporters in IBTimes. Although he has no authority to say the army in American has been enhanced, he has the authority to say how safe he is and all American citizens are. Comparing to the authors Holder, Janet, and James, although they have authority to say how well they did to improve everything in military, they may have their way, which is bias, to see their “improvement.
In view of Guantanamo Bay, the existing population stands low. However, still open are the special military courts and camp. The Obama administration continues to retain broad programs on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, as well as formulating only modest reforms. On the same, the justice system shows great focus on cracking down on leakers of government secrets, while it clearly guards against court reviews of these secrets. For instance, the current administration has placed a ban on harsh interrogation, similarly to Bush administration. Conversely, the Obama administration under the arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) upheld the increase on drone strikes. Savage explores the process of policy continuation, with a broader insight into the underlying causes. The practical approach by the Obama administration on addressing threats, and resistance from congress and the Republican sides becomes unclear as pertains to the reasons for the current misunderstanding on policy formulations. A clear fact remains: both parties play a major role in the emergent policy frameworks under Obama administration. The current American government has created a philosophical strategy to reform that show sustenance of a variety of controversial decisions from past administrations,
As the operational environment changed, the operation showed that the United States was not looking at the problem objectively. General Petraeus came in, redefined the problem, and reframed the operational approach. Joint Publication 5.0 captures many of the lessons learned during this time. However, the United States needs to be mindful that it does not fight the last war, as it is prone to do.
Private military companies, security contractors and private military firms do provide so very useful functions and not all of them are paramilitary. Many private military companies such as DynCorp and Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, provide more services than just protection. Many functions performed by private military companies include logistical support, transportation, engineering, construction, skilled and unskilled laborers, maintenance, technical expertise and other paramilitary operations. (Kidwell, 2005) The government typically hires private security contractors to provide services that formally belonged to military forces such as the protection of high profile dignitaries and the guarding of military installations overseas. The proliferation of private military companies jumped significantly after the events of 9/11. The Bush Administration enacted a three-phase plan to increase the number of private contractors hired. The first phase in the hiring process was to try to release the military to fight the war on terrorism; the second phase was to allow commanders to focus their efforts on winning the war by outsourcing supplementary functions; third, it would support the President’s Management Agenda. As a result, private military companies are a necessary and important contingency plan for operations that would occur in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Dogru, p.13, 2010)
As a Wall Street Journal Pentagon correspondent, Thomas E. Ricks is one of America’s elite military journalists. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and awarded a Society of Professional Journalists Award for his writings based on the Marines. Thomas E. Ricks lectures to military officers and was a member of Harvard University’s Senior Advisory Council on the project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. As a Pentagon correspondent, he can access information where no other civilian can step foot—traveling with soldiers abroad, his eyes tell the tale of the life of a Marine.
Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic movies are a sub-genre of science fiction, horror fiction, or fantasy that focus on the end of the world, or the world just after "the end." But, where do the influences of these movies come from? Every good apocalyptic film that we know and love stems off of the fear and concerns that revolved around the time it was made. Steven Glawson provides a strong quote that parallels to my research in the article, “Post-Apocalyptic Cinema: What The Future Tells Us About Today” saying that, “[s]ince the 1950s, post- apocalyptic films can be seen as gateways into the crises of the decade they were
The amount of corruption within the United States’ violent involvement in the Middle East is almost unreal. Unfortunately, the wars have been too real—half a million deaths in the first year of Iraqi Freedom alone (Rogers). These wars have been labeled--the violence, filtered-- to fit a specific agenda. Whether the deaths are deemed an acceptable loss in the name of national security, or as a devastating injustice, the reality doesn’t change. Lives have been lost. Lives that will never be brought back. The intention of wars is in part due to attacks on the twins towers on September 11th 2001. When the buildings fell, almost three thousand people died, according
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is a Steven Spielberg science fiction drama film, which conveys the story of a younger generation robot, David, who yearns for his human mother’s love. David’s character stimulates the mind-body question. What is the connection between our “minds” and our bodies?