Someone Else's War

We can add a new list of atrocities to the Iraq War.

I just finished watching a documentary entitled Someone Else's War.

In addition to outsourcing torture, we have also outsourced manual labor jobs for the US military. These jobs have been filtered through a convoluted system of military contractors and subcontractors, all of which fall under the responsibility of a company you may be familiar with--Halliburton.

Poor migrant workers, primarily from India and the Philippines have forced into essentially indentured servitude, providing basic services like housekeeping and food service for American troops. These are tantamount to slave labor: wages on which no American could survive. They've been promised grand sums of money such as $1000 American dollars for their efforts, but, in fact, forced to pawn off their few possessions to raise the money merely to be employed. The military's grunt work is done primarily by these migrant workers who live in hastily constructed shanty-towns that no civilized person would consider neither sanitary nor humane.

I've always wondered how we could fight this ill-fated war with such a relatively light tax burden and now I understand why. Halliburton has acted like every other American corporation--outsourcing jobs it can have performed much cheaper elsewhere. Yet, through a convoluted system of network, Halliburton itself can claim to not be accountable for the actions of its subsidiaries.

Halliburton's self-serving promotional commercials feature a parade of actors, all of whom are American. The company thus tries to justify its existence, directly denying that it is neglecting to hire American workers. The reality is that of the 40,000 workers Halliburton employs in Iraq, only 20% are American.

This sort of trickery is further emphasized by the way in which a Philippine man was told he was going to be sent to work in Kuwait. Then, after he arrived in Kuwait, he was told he was going to work in Iraq, instead.

If this happened to ordinary American citizens, there would be a public outcry surrounding the proceedings but since this happens to the poorest of the poor, no one bats an eyelash.

Within the framework of the documentary is a direct accusation of the minimal amount of tax we pay, while whining and bitching about it, while the rest of the world bears a much higher tax burden than we do. It may be human nature to complain about taxation. Rest assured, I pay around 30% of my wages in tax but at what cost?

It also begs the question. How are jobs evolving in this country? As more and more corporations realize the cost benefits in outsourcing jobs overseas, where they are obligated to pay only a fraction of the wages to employ Americans and certainly without being obligated to provide basic health services---what jobs will be left for Americans?


For more information: Someone Else's War.