The United States is Justified in using private military firms abroad to pursue its military objecti

Good luck to you as well. My last opponent on this had his account deactivated; I hope there wont be a similar problem here. AC I affirm, and define the following terms. Justified: to show a satisfactory reason for something done (Random House) Private military firm: (Hired) corporate bodies that specialize in the provision of military skills, including combat operations, strategic planning, intelligence, risk assessment, operational support, training, and technical skills. [Singer, P.W. 2003. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.] Abroad - Beyond the bounds of one's country (Random House) Pursue - To strive to gain or accomplish (Merriam Webster) Military objective - the overall plan of a given mission. (Hamilton DeSaussure, Crimes of War 08) The value is Life because life is a prerequisite to all other values. With no life there can be no morality, justice, or rights. Therefore, the criterion is the maximization of life. C1. Private military firms solve conflicts/genocide A. Past record PMC's have the experience and technology to solve foreign genocides, empirically proven. I will focus on two examples for now. 1. Sierra Leone Civil War Randal Parker 03, http://www.parapundit.com...... In 1995, the Sierra Leone government was near defeat from the ruf, a nefarious rebel group whose habit of chopping off the arms of civilians as a terror tactic made it one of the most truly evil groups of the late twentieth century...the government hired the private military firm, made up of veterans from the South African apartheid regime's elite forces, to help rescue it. Deploying a battalion-sized unit of assault infantry (numbering in the low hundreds), who were supported by firm-manned combat helicopters, light artillery, and a few armored vehicles, Executive Outcomes was able to defeat the RUF in a span of weeks. Its victory brought enough stability to allow Sierra Leone to hold its first election in over a decade. After its contract termination, however, the war restarted. In 1999 the U.N. was sent in. Despite having a budget and personnel size nearly 20 times that of the private firm, the U.N. force took several years of operations, and a rescue by the British military, to come close to the same results." 2. Rwanda genocide Parker continues, "Similarly, the aforementioned Executive Outcomes performed a business exploration of whether it would have had the capacity to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. Internal plans claim that the company could have had armed troops on the ground within 14 days of its hire and been fully deployed with over 1,500 of its own soldiers, along with air and fire support within six weeks. The cost for a six-month operation to provide protected safe havens from the genocide was estimated at $150 million (around $600,000 a day). This private option compares quite favorably with the eventual U.N. relief operation, which deployed only after the killings. The U.N. operation ended up costing $3 million a day (and did nothing to save hundreds of thousands of lives)." These are merely two examples. There others such as Kosovo, Angola, and Columbia where PMC's have been successful. B. Future solvency PMC's evolving capabilities make them a viable option to solve conflicts in the future. One example is Darfur. http://findarticles.com...... "In a speech at the Naval Academy in 2007, Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, advocated sending Blackwater (now called "Xe"), the private military contractor, into Darfur to end the genocide for the bargain price of $40 million. When combined with a no-fly zone over Darfur, putting private military contractors on the ground there is a viable option for bringing the genocide to an end quickly and cheaply. Analyses of past no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq and of South African private military contractor actions in Angola and Sierra Leone suggest that the United States could end the genocide in Darfur by implementing such a zone over Darfur and introducing military contractors... Furthermore, their capabilities aren't limited to these three examples. They are effective solvers in general. Tony Geraghty, (British War Correspondent), SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE, 2009, 17 "PMCs offer the only military forces both willing and capable of providing rapid and effective military services in most Third World conflicts. Their operations have saved tens of thousands of lives but their potential is even greater. PMCs can provide the competent military backbone to ensure the success of UN or regional multinational peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations... More critically, given an international mandate, PMCs can decisively intervene in instances of genocide, as in Rwanda." Contention 2: Military overstretch A. The US military is overextended now Our military is burdened with 2 wars and constant deployment for humanitarian missions across various nations. Over 250,000 American troops are deployed in 128 countries. Aida Akl, Military Connections, August 2005 (http://www.militaryconnections.com......) "...the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained the military to a point where it runs a higher risk of not being able to quickly and easily defeat potential enemies. U.S. military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recruitment shortfalls in some branches of the armed forces, such as the Army and National Guard, have alarmed some observers who warn that the military is overburdened and overstretched. " B. PMC's solve. Problem is worse without them. Deborah Avant, http://www.socsci.uci.edu...... "Contractors are also quite useful to powerful nations such as the United States, which is managing the chaos in Iraq with fewer troops than many believed necessary by increasing its (private military) personnel pool. By having flexibility, the united states is able to engage in more expansive operations that are essential to winning conflicts in the interconnected world. Also, since PMF’s are used by countries around the world, if the United States were not to utilize the market, it would be comparatively disadvantaged in terms of military readiness." Therefore, affirming benefits foregin nations and ourselves.