I'll be honest; I've long worried about the increasing use of military contractors, but this point by Hendrik Hertzberg never occurred to me before:
The military-industrial complex produced by the Cold War (which still consumes untold billions even though the weapons systems it builds are perfectly useless for the national-security threats the country now faces) was and is able to prosper in the absence of actual fighting. The purpose of piling up all those missiles targeted on the Soviet Union, after all, was to avoid using them. But the kind of privatization represented by the gun-toting Iraq war contractors has created what she called “a live war military-industrial complex”—that is, an industry that depends for its profits, even its existence, on hot wars, wars that kill people. “Free-market conservatives have given us this,” she said. “In conversations with military people, it’s an opening to all sorts of other issues.”
I'm actually surprised that I never took the argument in that direction. A few years back, I got into a classroom debate with one of my professors about the idea of privatizing capital punishment. She was for it, I was opposed, primarily on the grounds that I didn't think anyone should profit off of a system that I already believed was immoral. Beyond that, however, I remember remarking at the time that the profit incentive would push companies in her system to favor a wider use of capital punishment. It's the same argument, but in this instance it has much wider consequences. Nevertheless, I never thought to make it. Better late than never, I suppose!
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