Outsourcing intelligence

IN THE NEWS
There are many reasons to be deeply concerned about the recent revelations about torture in the Abu Ghraib prison. I'll pick just one for now: the role of "contractors," yet again, in doing jobs most Americans would assume (correctly) should be done by the US government.

I'll write more about the "contractor" issue later. For now, let me make a couple of points:

• If someone is a soldier-for-hire, the correct word is mercenary, not contractor. The C-word has an Orwellian atmosphere about it, so let's drop it, now.


• If we're fighting a counterinsurgency war in Iraq, and we're outsourcing intelligence-gathering work, including the interrogation of prisoners, we get what we pay for: crap.

Obviously, we contract with food service companies to handle the cafeterias at national parks. We also pay intelligence sources for the information they provide. But the core work of the intelligence community--spycraft, analysis, and "direct action"--needs to be done by people employed by the US government. The limbo we're now in with the Abu Ghraib scandal--if torture happened, how do we hold the mercenaries accountable--is something we could easily have avoided. Brutalization in warfare happens, and the risk of it during counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations is significantly higher than in conventional combat. Not knowing who in a crowd might be someone about to walk up and shoot you in the face makes you skittish about everyone. Feeling that the villagers, denying knowing who the insurgents are (in Vietnam, Iraq, wherever), are lying to you places you on the knife's edge between walking away and giving them what you feel are their just desserts.

These hard realities make it difficult to avoid brutalization, even when the people in question are in the military or the intelligence agencies, in a direct chain of command that US leaders ostensibly control, and subject to both US law and military discipline.

Mercenaries are subject to neither. We clearly do not have good leverage over them, nor can we. The problems keeping mercenaries in line are as old as warfare: see the Thirty Years War for some of the most famous examples. No one has a good solution to the problem. The corporate entity for whom the mercenaries work may be completely outside US law, and the companies can laugh off the Iraqi "authorities." While we might threaten to cancel our contract with the mercenary firm, who will replace them, particularly with our own self-created manpower shortage in Iraq?

Vietnam had the Phoenix Program. The civil wars in Latin America had the School of the Americas. In both cases, the reality is far more complex than most critics or defenders would admit. However, complexity means a mix of both good and bad, in the best of circumstances for controlling what the US does and doesn't do in fighting counterinsurgency wars. Remove the control, and the results are both predictable and horrible.

If you were to summon a ghost from the Thirty Years War, the specter might be surprised to see someone repeat the obvious mistake of relying too much on mercenaries. Then again, maybe the spirit of someone with a dim view of human nature might not be too shocked after all.