Privatization of War as the Decline of Civilized Engagement
As we approach the end of another year, we do so not with the honor and the humility that in years past have been the privilege and the pride of our United States. Over the last number of decades we have seen decreasing confidence in the transparency of our government.
And we have, many of us, experienced decreased confidence in the manner in which our government is seen around the world. There was a time around the Second Great War and in the years that followed that we were the envy of the civilized world. Our colleges and our universities and our public education and our health care systems were what the rest of the world aspired to.
Our moral high ground and the values that created that vision were standards felt around the globe. That the U.S. Government would ever sink to the level of hardship and the degree of double standard is an abomination. At the center of the controversy is a shift in the method of operating our wars. Years ago the mercenary aspect of war was but a fraction of our efforts at rebuilding countries.
Now the bulk of our operations are contracted out to private companies which not only make billions of dollars of profit, but run roughshod over our reputation worldwide.
On November 5th of this past year, 2010, the United Nations began a review of where and how our country stands in relations to human rights. Privatization of military operations has led to a sad fact of consciousness...we have contracted out not only the operations of war, but the very ethics that conduct the principles by which we engage in war. In addition to never having had the audacity of pre-emptive strikes, we never had traded arms for treaties either. Our reputation at Abu-Ghraib cast a long shadow on our principles while Mission Accomplished cast an even longer shadow on our intentions. It seems to the ordinary reader that propaganda is not being used to color other nations' opinion of America; but rather it is being used against our own populace. We as Americans can no longer believe what is being spoken to us by our leaders.
The fiction that is fed to the presses are stories to encourage We the People to believe in our mission to spread democracy throughout the world; but there is little difference between the spread of economic capitalism and the spread of democracy.
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