Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Readiness – I/L – General

Contractors are bad- they undermine US efforts because of lack of management

Glanz 9 (James, Baghdad Bureau chief of the NY Times, NY Times, Sep 1-9) ET

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. As of March this year, contractors made up 57 percent of the Pentagon’s force in Afghanistan, and if the figure is averaged over the past two years, it is 65 percent, according to the report by the Congressional Research Service. A copy of the report was posted online by Secrecy News, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists. The 68,197 contractors — many of them Afghans — handle a variety of jobs, including cooking for the troops, serving as interpreters and even providing security, the report says.

Contractors hurt our war effort- they are less willing to take risks and are overpaid

Glanz 9 (James, Baghdad Bureau chief of the NY Times, NY Times, Sep 1-9) ET

Responding to the Congressional research report, Frederick D. Barton, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said it was highly questionable whether contractors brought the same commitment and willingness to take risks as the men and women of the military or the diplomatic services. He also questioned whether using contractors was cost effective, saying that no one really knew whether having a force made up mainly of contractors whose salaries were often triple or quadruple those of a corresponding soldier or Marine was cheaper or more expensive for the American taxpayer. With contractors focused on preserving profits and filing paperwork with government auditors, he said, “you grow the part of government that, probably, the taxpayers appreciate least.” Congress appropriated at least $106 billion for Pentagon contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 through the first half of the 2008 fiscal year, the report says. The report said the combined forces in Iraq and Afghanistan still had more uniformed military personnel than contractors over all: 242,657 contractors and about 282,000 troops as of March 31.

Outsourcing to contractors undermines the military’s effectiveness

Hedahl 9 (Marc, Captain USAF, http://isme.tamu.edu/JSCOPE05/Hedahl05.html) ET

However, as I noted earlier it is the professional and consequential issues that those of us in the military are best suited to consider, so I will spend the remainder of the discussion on those issues. Now, the most fundamental reason one could argue against a particular act of outsourcing would be because of the impact that action would have on the profession itself. Any organization that is contemplating outsourcing needs to first and foremost think about their own core functions that should never be outsourced This is true in any industry but it takes on special importance when we are talking about a profession that is considering outsourcing duties to members outside their profession. A few examples may help illustrate this point. For instance, there is a risk when members of a company disclose proprietary sales numbers to an outside consultant. This risk would count as a good consequential reason not to hire a consultant for this purpose. It is important to note, however, that that is merely a risk to be weighed in the over-all cost benefit analysis. There will be many cases in which the expertise gained from outsourcing is worth the risk. There is no foundational and irrevocable damage done to the occupation of being a salesman in the unlikely occurrence that this information is leaked to a competitor. In fact the very notion of such a harm being done to an occupation is almost nonsensical. Compare this case with a hospital that is considering exposing outside researchers to client information. Here, there is not merely an issue of consequential value but an issue for the medical profession itself, since patient confidentiality is one of the tenants of the medical profession.[14] This is not to say that this action cannot be taken, merely that there is more to consider, and in effect more to risk when we are discussing a profession and not merely an occupation.

Readiness – I/L – General

Contractors are illegal and ruin accountability, ethical codes, and make the real military seem a sham

Hedahl 9 (Marc, Captain USAF, http://isme.tamu.edu/JSCOPE05/Hedahl05.html) ET

Furthermore, there is the very real possibility of damage to the morale of our troops when the contractors they are fighting alongside have better equipment and get paid significantly better. [31] The Outsourcing can also negatively impact the ability to retain crucial, skilled personnel within the military itself. For example, there are reportedly more former British Special Forces soldiers working for PMFs in Iraq than in the entire British Armed Services.[32] There are even more severe consequences, however, if we let PMFs operate independently of the military professionals within our nations military. We have similar issues of moral and retention. In addition, the negative consequence of the breakdown in a cohesive battle plan when you have in essence two groups fighting along side each other using separate communications systems are even troubling . Furthermore, these contractors cannot be considered “lawful combatants” under the 3rd Geneva Convention so long as they remain outside of a unified chain of command working directly for the state.[33] Worst of all, we have ripped the profession apart. We have fractured our training, our accountability, and our ethical codes. I do not believe that the crisis has yet reached the point where talk of the military profession is meaningless, but I know that we cannot fight alongside and independently of large numbers of mercenaries for extended periods of time without becoming mercenaries ourselves, not because of the effect that their actions will have on ours, but merely because their existence destroys the ability for the profession to exist at all. If we ever reach such a point, our uniforms, our medals, and even our codes of honor truly will become nothing more than anachronistic window dressing.