One of my favorite teaching tools has always been the "compare and contrast" assignment. If you've gone through enough school to be able to read this post, you know what I'm talking about. Take two books, or essays, or sets of facts, compare them to each other, and talk about what's the same, what's different, and what the similarities and differences mean. It's a great assignment, because it forces you to not only examine a set of facts, but to look at them in the context of other data.
Today, I found myself doing a compare and contrast between an old Presidential address and some recent statements and facts. Looking at the more recent events in the context of the old speech made me realize just how far we've traveled as a nation in the last 66 years - and in what direction.
Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night. I mean, we've got a fantastic economy here in the United States, but yet, when you think about the psychology of the country, it is somewhat down because of this war.Now, here in Washington when I say, "What do you mean by that?," they say, "Well, why don't you raise their taxes; that'll cause there to be a sacrifice." I strongly oppose that. If that's the kind of sacrifice people are talking about, I'm not for it because raising taxes will hurt this growing economy. And one thing we want during this war on terror is for people to feel like their life's moving on, that they're able to make a living and send their kids to college and put more money on the table.
--George W. Bush
Interview with PBS NewsHour
16 January 2007
And a couple of current facts:
Although the Bush administration has been accusing Iran of aiding and abetting attacks on American soldiers in Iraq for months now, Halliburton - a company that has made enormous amounts of money providing various services to US troops during the war - did not stop conducting business in Iran until 8 days ago.
Blackwater USA - another GWOT contractor - paid it's security workers in Iraq $600/day. That's $18,000 per month. My wife's brigade commander - an 0-6 bird colonel with over 20 years in - is only making about $14,000 per month before taxes, and that figure includes the Honolulu housing allowance, the Honolulu cost of living allowance, and flight pay. An E-5 sergeant is going to be making somewhere between half and a third as much. A private, not even a quarter that.
Blackwater can afford to pay that much because, due to the wonders of cost-plus contracts, the more they pay their security guards, the bigger their profits. They take that $600 per day, add their administrative costs, add a 36% profit, and send the bill on up the line.
That's the situation now. That's not the way it's always been. Let's take a trip back in time to January of 1941, when FDR spoke to Congress and the American people about the need to sacrifice to support a war that we would not enter for another 11 months:
I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call.
A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt
State of the Union
6 January 1941
The comparison and contrast is left as a trivial exercise for the reader.
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Mike, you bring up some good points but there are some additional things you need to consider. First, you are miscalculating the total value of what the colonel is earning. You can not forget that the military offers an amazing benefits package, including retirement at 20 years. Blackwater contractors do get paid a lot of cash but they are only paid while they are on contract (a matter of a couple of years). They don't get any benefits (none!) and once the contract is over, its over. No retirement, no benefits, no additional payments.
As far as costs to the government, how much do you think it costs to produce one Soldier? Don't forget that you can't just hire a Soldier for a short period of time and for a fixed fee. Also, cost-plus contracts are a thing of the past for security contracts. For the last few years, all contracts have been fixed price contracts. Let me say that one more time, the contracts are fixed price contracts. Cost-plus was only used at the beginning of the war. Also, your calculation for what Blackwater bills the government is completely inaccurate. Unless you work for Blackwater or the government contracting office that hired them, I am not sure how you can call that basic calculation or any of your information facts.
Also, what kind of profit margin are you quoting in your article? Gross, net, before taxes, etc. Before you start complaining about profit margins, I recommend you do some research about the profit margins that are applied to most of the products you buy every days as well as the profit margins of other companies. You want to see something shocking, check out the margins for a company like Microsoft.
I know people like complaining about how much the government is paying Blackwater, but do you have any idea how much the government pays other consulting companies in and around the Washington D.C. area for management and technology consulting. I worked for Blackwater and am now working for a major consulting firm in Washington. The government pays consulting companies for providing low-level consultants way more money than they pay Blackwater for security personnel. These low level consultants are basically college graduates that work in an office for eight hours per day and then go home to their wife and kids. You don't even want to know how much the government pays for mid and high level consultants. Blackwater guys are putting their life on the line daily protecting diplomats. They are well paid for a reason.
I think it is really important that we question this entire contractor situation, but it is important that we maintain an accurate understanding of the situation. I think it was Winston Churchill who said "A rumor will circle the world numerous times while the truth is still putting on its boots."
Hey S.
Curious you should mention Churchill. Here's another quote:
"I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Churchill asked the citizens of England and the UK to give up certain peacetime assumptions. In fighting this war, he said, the entire British nation must unite to oppose the threat and defend secure the freedoms and decencies of that society.
He asked them to give up milk and meat and grow their own vegetables. Rationing and the Austerity Program continued into the fifties.
And people gave this sacrifice willingly. They laid down their money, their time, and a great number of them their lives. Not just those in uniform, but the home front as well.
At one point Churchill asked Britons to sacrifice their garden railings to supply iron for the war effort. The iron wasn't needed. Most of it rusted in scrapyards until well after the war was over. But with that symbolic gesture he renewed the will of the civillian population to fight.
That will, and that public support, the lines of young volunteers queueing up to be inducted, showed that all of a democratic society must engage in the war if it is to be won.
George W. Bush asked America to go shopping.
To continue to funnel their hard-earned cash into industries that have nothing to do with his precious "war against terror" or even his personal putsch in Iraq.
He gave obscenely profitable contracts to favoured friends and didn't blink even when he was told he was overcharged. KBR and Halliburton are laughing up their sleeves in Dubai, and Blackwater's probably immune from inquiry, if they've kept their receipts for who paid whom to do what exactly.
He said "go about your usual daily lives as if nothing is wrong or threatening", even as he suspended constitutional and international human rights to combat that dire threat.
He said to let the troops bear the blood and the pain for America, so that people can continue in single-minded pursuit of that Hummer, that lawn furniture, that boat. And they have. And they continue to. People in situations like Mike's live in fear of a phone call every day. They are the home front. That's simply not enough.
George II says "we have to fight them there so we don't end up fighting them over here." Bull. The war must be fought over here so that the US can fight them over there.
If Dubya'd introduced beer rationing in 2001, the country would never have gone to Iraq and Bin Laden would be rotting in prison, where he belongs.