In her essay on Time.com “Is America’s Second Contractors’ War Drawing Near?”, Ann Hagedorn examines the possibility of the United States engaging in a Second Contractor’s War, following the First Contractor War, the term coined for the country’s involvement in Iraq after it become the most privatized military engagement in U.S. history, with private contractors actually outnumbering traditional troops.
Ann poses many questions that another war fought with a privatized military yields:
“This time, for example, will we be told about the extent of the role of military and security contractors? Will we know which companies are making millions, even billions, from providing armed and unarmed services in the name of American defense? Will we know how many layers of subcontractors there are, from what countries they were hired, and who trained them? When the U.S. government announces casualty totals, will the stats include the contractors who were wounded and killed? And what about the soldiers missing in action? In Iraq by the spring of 2011 there were eight MIAs, seven of which were private contractors.”
And she asks the ultimate question, “Three years (after the end of the First Contractors’ War), we as citizens of a democracy must ask ourselves: are we ready for the Second Contractors’ War?”
For the full essay go to Time.com.