Four years ago, President Barack Obama declared the end of the Iraq war. So much of that fight and our current involvement in the Middle East is carried out by a privatized military. Back in 2003 Iraq invasion, there was the predictable commentary about why we went to war and what the consequences were. And there […]
So you’re getting out of the military soon, or separated recently and you thought you would jump into the world of private contracting. The pay is lucrative, the brotherhood you miss from military life is there, and you like to travel – so why not? Whether it’s the glamorous world of high threat mobile security […]
Erik Prince has a message for ISIS: You’re lucky Blackwater is gone... Last week, the controversial founder of the private military company had plenty to say about what the organization he once ran could be doing in the fight against the so-called Islamic State—and also why Republicans need to stop being such losers. “It’s a […]
While this is a slight exaggeration, a recent examination by Sean McFate, a former Army paratrooper who later served in Africa working for DynCorp International and is now an associate professor at the National Defense University, suggests that the Pentagon’s dependence on contractors to help wage its wars has unleashed a new era of warfare […]
Despite the volume of accountability initiatives and the involvement of various governmental bodies, it is still unclear what will guide the selection of armed contractors for future conflicts. Back in May 2012, for example, the then US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Daniel Baer, gave a speech at a […]