Privatize National Defense

The notion that something as important and vital as national security should be provided for by something as fickle and disingenuous as private sector corporations and Insurance companies is throughly absurd. And I intend to prove with my arguments that a private military would be both ineffective and unenthusiastic in the role of providing for the common defense. To begin, my opponent mistakenly argues that the food-service is on par with the same level of complexity, professionalism, and importance as national defense. He is badly mistaken. Your everyday McDonald's employee who flips my hamburgers for $8.50 an hour is the last person on earth I would want to flip the switch on a Minuteman III ballistic missile. And actually, yes it does have something to do with his or her qualifications and trust factors as much as it also has to do with the fact that free-market principles, such as competition, supply and demand, cost-benefit analysis, and profits, are incompatible with national security needs that demand a much more selfless type of service; and I'm not talking about the old school feudal system of neighborhood watch gangs peasants would payoff because they could offer protection from the other gangs. A life insurance company -or in this case "war insurance" of which no insurance company would dare provide for anyway - will only underwrite coverage for people who are rated for preferred risks, the intent of course is that after claims and administrative costs, the company must still make a profit. An actual army however, must be able to deter and overcome all risks and security threats, not just the ones that it prefers. The idea that you can set a premium or a market value to a national security threat, like to a terrorist attack, or Iranian nuclear strike, or even an alien invasion, is insane! Are we really to advertise security threats to the public with the intent of making a profit? How can you possibly underwrite foreign policy or fight a war with that kind of mentality? What id to stop a company from starting or joining a war just to compete for profit? And how would we thwart the dangers of a mercenary army that is more loyal to its stock holders and policy owners than to its own government? My opponent must answer for these questions before again proposing a privatized army. But for the sake of furthering the debate, I agree with my opponent that the private sector has a solid track record of typically being more cost effective than the federal government,and I argue that its because private businesses have the added interest of making a profit. But this has not been the case with the moral decay and greed associated with the military industrial complex and defense contractors like Lockheed-Martin, Northop-Grumman, and Blackwater. Northrop-Grumman has in the past been convicted in federal court several times of knowingly selling defective equipment to the US Military; Lockheed-Martin has also scandalously inflated the cost of its most expensive weapons programs (like the F-35) with delays, cost overruns, unmet needs, and must have software upgrades that may as well be the military equivalent to the DLC that we pay for in video games but at the added insult to taxpayers everywhere; And Backwater, meanwhile, has proven repeatedly to show disregard to all respects to civilian casualties, international law, and rules of engagement in their security tours in Iraq and elsewhere. But my opponent argues that we should let these guys dictate defense policy for us, and perhaps even more so then they already do! I really think not! And I know I'm being pretty critical of defense companies here because one can argue that congress tends to be just as guilty for the corruption with government contracts as the bean counters at Lockheed-Martin, but the point here is that this is just a taste of some of the themes we could expect if we were to privatize the military and expand the mission of defense companies beyond supplying equipment and hardware to actually defending our flag and way of life. A member of the armed forces must be loyal to his constitution and to his country and not to his pay check if national defense is to be effective. True cost efficiently on the battlefield cannot be measured in number of dollars saved and profits gained, but number of actual lives saved and in the willingness of soldiers to pay the ultimate price for a cause greater than themselves. The greatest defect we could expect from any private army would be to put a price tag on that kind of service. My opponent argues that the essence of the free-market is "delivering a high-quality and demanded product or service at a competitive price." Yet when it comes to national security and defending our freedoms, the essence must be to win at any cost - and that is something no mercenary army and insurance company can ever understand.