Cartoon 683: Privatize

Throughout our love affair with “privatization”, one area remained largely sacrosanct.

War today is an expensive proposition. This is especially glaring with the Financial Crisis. The costs of wars have been “off-the-books” in the presented Federal Budget over the last five years. Had they been on the books, the Federal deficit would have been visibly far larger.

Today, practically the entire food chain of the army in the wars has been outsourced to Halliburton. But what about outsourcing the military? It would fall in line with the Republican ideology of free market privatization.  As the story goes, the free market always does a better job.

I can image our awarding military contracts to the low cost bidders. They are likely to be third world dictators. They would send their boy soldiers to war on our behalf. The indigenous nation at war would experience a tremendous increase in rape, robbery and mayhem by these troops. But we would make certain to have a clause in the contract indemnifying us from war crimes they might commit. I doubt the legality of the clause would hold up in the World Court.

Wars would be far cheaper for us. There are likely to be tremendous causalities among the contracted troops. But why should we care? We are paying for results. What it takes to achieve those results is someone else’s problem. The downside is that even with war costing less in billable financial terms, it will really cost more. First, war will be a “cash and carry” proposition. Printing more money our hiding the costs in budget games would be far less of an option. Second, a prime argument upfront in going to war would be its financial costs and the value likely to be received from the expenditure.  It would force warfare to be broken down into discrete and measurable items.

Perhaps privatizing the military might result in less war and more diplomacy.