Privatize National Defense

The actual quote my opponent refers to is "war is too important to be left to the generals." Which was first said by George Clemenceau, prime minister of France during WWI. But I'm not sure what's worse, letting fast-food workers arm nuclear missile silos or actually letting a French man conduct a war effort. My opponent also errors tremendously with his facts and with his fantasies. No private insurance company has ever done the job -or could ever hope to do the job- of covering all the costs from a disaster like a major earthquake or flood. It's not possible, and that's why we have FEMA, whose expressed mission statement is to provide federal relief and assistance to homeowners and businesses in the event that a disaster overwhelms the state's and population's means to cope. And according to http://www.katrina.noaa.gov... the economic cost for Hurricane Katrina was $125 billion dollars, which effected 15 million people. What my proponent is proposing to cover - which is only one event- is three times the customers of auto insurance claims per year at a price that is more than the total world arms sales (2010 numbers) of the top 5 defense companies combined, and would constitute today the entire defense budget of China. And before my opponent argues that one can be more cost effective and still have a cheaper army with free market principles - nobody does things cheaper than China! According to one study in USANews the estimated costs of the wars is Iraq and Afghanistan will range anywhere from $4 to 6 trillion dollars when they are finally over. Even if private companies could do things marginally cheaper, this number still represents a whopping 25 to 38% of GDP. My friends, there's a good reason we let governments fight our wars, and that's because when they at least go into massive debt they do not go bankrupt. http://www.usnews.com... I think it's interesting my opponent also brings up history, because history is clearly against him. Was it not the Spartans who first proved over the Greek City states that a state sponsored army -with superior discipline, zeal, conformity of training, institution, and tradition triumphed over thier cilvilian counterparts? Was it not Caesar and Sulla, who with their client armies, -bribed with higher salaries and paid for in plunder- that overthrew the Roman Republic? And what of the ineffectiveness of the feudal system to national unity, rule of law, and collective defense where a peasant paid the Lord or swore fealty in exchange for the protection of his knights? It took Charles Martel -a king in all but title- to unite all the lords from fighting each other to save the whole of Europe from Muslim invasion. And don't even get me started on how culturally backwards and militarily inferior were the Japanese Shoguns when it came to uniting or protecting all the people of Japan until the Meiji reforms. The French Revolution really did well too... until Napoleon took them over. My opponents only saving grace historically could be the British East India Company, whose privateers and private armies made colonialism economically possible, but just like the mercenaries Machiavelli lamented in Reniscessonce Italy, they were only motivated by profit, and would leave their British constitutes hanging for their defense as soon as the danger outweighed the money, leaving the acutal British military to intervene and the government to ultimately nationalize the company. Which also happened again with Cecil Rhodes's little venture in Africa. But if my opponent still cares to lecture about the "dangers of patriotism" and curruption of state armies, he should know who actually contributed to the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, because it was none other than Hitler's tan shirts and Mussolini's black shirts, by all definitions, private armies. Today the United States is actually at its smallest military-to-civilian ratio in its history. The point here being that the military has been overstreched and has had to reply more and more on private contractors, like Blackwater and the Senior Executive Service do its job. These companies however have made the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more dangerous by targeting civilians and infuriating the country with their personal disregard to anything cultural or mission related - and they do this because they can get away with it, they are not uniformed members, do not care, and can rarely be prosecuted under UCMJ or international law. And to close, my George beats my opponent's Georges! "To place any dependence upon militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff" - General George Washinton War is too important not to be left to the military.