{"id":534058,"date":"2010-04-19T10:49:24","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T14:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=82666"},"modified":"2010-04-19T10:49:24","modified_gmt":"2010-04-19T14:49:24","slug":"mcchrystal-military-overdependent-on-contractors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/534058","title":{"rendered":"McChrystal: Military Overdependent on Contractors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Danger Room<\/a>, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, took a jaundiced view of the role of contractors in Afghanistan<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“I think we’ve gone too far,” McChrystal said at France’s IHEDN military institute. “I actually think we would be better to reduce the number of contractors involved.”<\/p>\n

Alternatives could include increasing the number of troops “if necessary,” or “using a greater number of Afghan contractors, or Afghans to help with the mission,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

McChrystal said the use of contractors was founded upon “good intentions,” such as to limit military commitments or to save money for governments.<\/p>\n

“I think it doesn’t save money,” he said. “We have created in ourselves a dependency on contractors that I think is greater than it ought to be.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It doesn’t appear as if McChrystal distinguished between security<\/em> contractors — what people tend to mean when they talk about the nefarious influence of contract personnel in war zones — and contractors for, say, food and laundry and development advice and logistics (who also have been involved in a lot of waste, fraud and abuse). Nathan Hodge at Danger Room is skeptical that anything will actually change as a result, since the alternative is to increase the size and function of the military significantly, and that’s loaded with political peril.<\/p>\n

That said, one point McChrystal didn’t <\/em>apparently <\/em>make is that security contractors in Afghanistan aren’t obligated by law to follow the commander’s guidance for waging the war, something crucial in a battle for a local population’s political allegiances, since that population will distinguish between Americans and non-Americans, not U.S. troops and U.S. contractors. With the military prepared to award a new contract for assistance in training Afghan police<\/a>, that’s a subject where McChrystal’s words could go a long way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Danger Room, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, took a jaundiced view of the role of contractors in Afghanistan: “I think we’ve gone too far,” McChrystal said at France’s IHEDN military institute. “I actually think we would be better to reduce the number of contractors involved.” Alternatives could include […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}