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thedrifter
10-11-07, 07:48 AM
Exclusive: Who Birthed Blackwater?

Author: Jeff Bearor, (USMC, ret.)
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: October 11, 2007

In the wake of the recent civilian casualty incident in Iraq involving Blackwater security forces, there has been plenty of finger pointing and little else. How did Blackwater become so entrenched in our war effort? FSM Contributing Editor Col. Jeff Bearor (USMC, ret.) sheds some much-needed light on the advent of security forces being used in war zones.



Who Birthed Blackwater?



By Col. Jeff Bearor (USMC, ret.)



Like everything else in the news these days, the controversy surrounding the private security company Blackwater has antecedents that are barely discussed and understood even less. Private security companies didn’t just come from out of the blue – nor did outsourced battlefield transportation and other logistics support for U.S. military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.



Many of the same officials who now decry the government’s use of outsourced assistance are partly responsible for the current predicament.



Take Blackwater, for instance. In normal circumstances when U.S. diplomats and official visitors need security support overseas, it is provided by host nation security forces. An embassy’s Regional Security Officer (RSO) and his small staff coordinate with local security officials for protection. In most U.S. embassies around the world there are a few Marines, but their job is to secure the embassy and its compound.



What happens when the host nation doesn’t have the resources to protect U.S. citizens? Either the State or Defense Department sends reinforcements, or the U.S. embassy RSO hires security from local or international companies. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan there were no functioning local security capabilities. This kind of security isn’t a military mission; our Soldiers and Marines were fighting wars or cleaning up the aftermath of wars. In irregular wars and counter-insurgencies where there are no “front lines” behind which security is assured, the alternative is to hire security firms.



Over the past 20 years, Congress has continually voted to gut State Department programs that might have provided security teams – or at least better oversight of the so-called “hired guns” that provide the security. The answer can’t be “send in the Marines” when all the Marines are busy fighting wars. The U.S. government was left with the least palatable alternative: hiring firms like Blackwater.



I’m not a fan of this situation, but we’re here because successive administrations and Congresses took a holiday from facing life in the real world by cutting our capability to adapt and respond. There are things you can outsource: if accountability is important, security and war-fighting aren’t among them.



Security capabilities on the ground aren’t the only items missing from our current inventory. As Presidents and Congresses looked for the post-Cold War “peace dividend,” the military was forced to come up with ways to preserve war-fighting capability in the face of substantial cuts in budget and manpower. After the success in the first Gulf War, we lulled ourselves into thinking that we could buy war support resources on the local economy just as we had in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. In order to preserve core war-fighting formations in the active force structure, military planners either put logistics capabilities into the Reserves to be called up in time of need, or planned to hire local help. Because much of the necessary logistics support has been outsourced, these days the first guy into the fight has a gun, the second guy in is a contracting NCO with a bag of money.



We end up with scores of contracts being written to support war fighters for everything from leased satellite communications channels to toilet paper; for people to man mess halls; and transportation assets to move everything hundreds of miles through hostile terrain while guarded by contracted security forces.



This is security and war on the cheap. Cheap not terms of treasure, but cheap in terms of U.S. government security manpower.



Now, six years on, we’ve finally decided the U.S. doesn’t have the military manpower it needs to successfully fight current conflicts, much less to respond with ground forces somewhere else. In fact, we’ve not had the capabilities to carry out our stated national security strategy and goals for years. We have continually underestimated and under-resourced our military and security manpower accounts in favor of whiz-bang technologies and wishful thinking.



We’ve set the expectation that U.S. government and military “boots on the ground” numbers don’t count for much. It’s not true for security, it’s not true for logistics support, and it’s certainly not true the myriad types of military and security challenges we are likely to face over the next 10 to 25 years.

Ellie