Reader’s Response: Last week’s “Blackwater tarnishes U.S. image aboard,” seethes of misinformation

“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” An astonishingly appropriate quip from Mark Twain for a response to John Sanford Friedrich’s recent article titled ‘Blackwater tarnishes U.S. image abroad.’ I’ve recently had the displeasure of discovering this article in which he effectively tarnished 35 percent of a page of our school’s noteworthy periodical with gus misinformation and liberal propaganda.

As a former Marine and former private contractor in the Iraqi Theatre of Operations (ITO), I must assume that he is the one that lacks the knowledge of America’s long standing history of contracting private military members to supplement our thinly stretched active-duty military. During times when our military is stretched too thin to effectively carry out every mission a conflict requires (to include every war and skirmish since the American Revolution), as a nation we must call upon our brave “soldiers of fortune” for support to fill in the blanks. Something his quoted 3rd district legislator must have overlooked in his assessment of the roles of private contractors. And contrary to popular belief, most of the private contractors have military experience serving in active duty branches of these United States. Yessir. Patriots. His referring to them as disloyal is about as appropriate as me calling you a terrorist. He is afforded the right to hold your head high as you walk around campus based on the sole fact that blood by an American was spilled in your honor in the name of freedom, despite the pattern of their uniform.

He is incorrect in his statement saying contractors cost more to the taxpayer. It costs approximately $250,000 to be able to place an Army soldier into the ITO. This includes all costs from training, salary and benefits, and individual equipment. Of course this price tag weighs heavier when multiple tours are required, which they are because the dwell time for a soldier is minimal since our military is stretched too thin as it is. Compare that with the salary of an already trained private military contractor, such as Blackwater contractors, and it would appear that it costs the taxpayer less to send someone just as qualified. In a September 2009 CRS report to Congress, the DoD acknowledges that using contractors can not only save the DoD money, (which in turn saves the taxpayer money), but contractors can be deployed quicker and with specialized skills that the military lacks, to include linguistics and biometrics. Not that it matters that contractors save taxpayers money as we are approaching a trillion dollars spent on the Global War on Terror (refer to www.costofwar.com) since 2001.

He is correct about one thing in your article. Our brave uniformed soldiers and Marines are just as capable, nay more capable, of providing diplomatic security to visiting officials. The only problem is, there’s just not enough of them to take time away from combat missions to taxi around diplomats. See we have an all-volunteer military in America, and there are ebbs and flows of when the Average Joe feels the sense of duty to serve their country. I feel we need to appreciate and honor all who have the loyalty and privilege to serve and not denigrate the ones that have a higher salary. Regardless of who signs their checks, they all fall under the restrictions of the Geneva Convention.

I’ve pledged allegiance to protect America from all enemies, foreign and domestic, has he? To answer General Patton’s famous question, thirty years from now when I’m asked what I did during the war, I won’t have to tell my children that I wrote an unpatriotic and misinformed article denigrating “disloyal” American war fighters.