The Los Angeles Times reported this morning that as part of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's effort to turn around the fight in Afghanistan, the U.S. military is planning to replace between 6,000 and 14,000 non-combat troops with contractors. This would allow the Army and Marines Corps to bring in more "trigger-pullers" without increasing the overall number of troops in theater, currently a contentious issue with the American public. With the military having experienced so many issues of waste, fraud, and abuse with contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan, however, some analysts – including this one – are questioning whether increasing their numbers will not produce more problems than solutions, including the prospect of increasingly jeopardizing soldiers' safety.

Colonel Wayne M. Shanks, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan that the Times' piece quoted, insists that "streamlining" the military bureaucracy that has built up in the Southwest Asian country will not "compromise the welfare of the troops." Although Col. Shanks refused to specify which groups of soldiers or Marines the military might replace, the Times assumed that the Pentagon would swap out those members of the armed forces performing roles such as guards or lookouts, or those within clerical or support squads.

The problem is that this reshuffling could push contractors into performing either inherently governmental functions or noncore functions that are crucial to executing the military's mission. Mishaps with contractors performing these roles in Iraq and Afghanistan, which can significantly increase costs to the taxpayer, undermine the U.S. mission, or, at worst, directly put soldiers in jeopardy, have proven repeatedly that the military needs to keep these functions in-house, or, at the very least, provide much better oversight. In fact, just yesterday, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) uncovered a "Lord of the Flies environment" at the camp that houses contractor personnel responsible for guarding the American embassy in Kabul that is degrading the level of security provided and endangering all those that work at the embassy.

Moreover, according to numerous reports, including from Department of Defense and congressional commissions, the government does not have the proper oversight infrastructure in place to monitor the roughly 68,000 contractors currently in Afghanistan, let alone the thousands more that will be added under Gen. McChrystal's plan. This lack of oversight contributes to the loss of billions of taxpayer dollars every year, and is exactly what led to the abuses perpetrated by the contractors recently exposed by POGO, the tragedy that is Blackwater or Xe, or any other contractor misdeed you can think of. Contractors performing inherently governmental functions combined with inadequate oversight – all occurring in an environment where a resurgent Taliban increasingly has its act together – could mean a much costlier war, in terms of both money and lives.

Image by Flickr user Army.mil used under a Creative Commons license.