ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller has a very good piece on an issue that has fallen out of the headlines: the deep reliance on private contractors to fight the Iraq and Afghanistan War. The wars have not just lead to the deaths of 5,200 U.S. troops but also 1,600 contract workers. But what Miller’s piece highlights, through the tale of wounded KBR truck driver Reggie Lane, is the disturbing disconnect between care for veterans and care for contractors:
Many of the civilians have come home as military veterans in all but name, sometimes with lifelong disabilities but without the support network available to returning troops.
There are no veterans’ halls for civilian workers, no Gold Star Wives, no military hospitals. Politicians pay little attention to their problems, and the military has not publicized their contributions.
“These guys are like the Vietnam vets of this generation,” said Lee Frederiksen, a psychologist who worked for Mission Critical Psychological Services, a Chicago-based firm that provides counseling for war zone workers. “The normal support that you would get if you were injured in the line of duty as a police officer or if you were injured in the military . . . just doesn’t exist.”
Warttime contractors like KBR and Blackwater faced scrutiny and even vilification in the Bush administration for their ties to the Republican Party and ability to make a quick buck off the Iraq War. Now, however, their continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has faded into the background. It is these contractors that enable the Obama administration to consider an escalation of the Afghanistan War — there would otherwise not be the military manpower necessary. Yet in talks of troop build-ups, war casualties, and veterans health care, contract workers are invisible people.