This War on Terror is brought to you by...

Read this news story today and felt compelled to rant.Basically, the U.S. will pull out its armed forces at the set withdrawal date, Obama will go up and say some “mission accomplished” bullshit, and the war will rage on, because it’s just business as usual up in Washington.

As the U.S. troops leave Iraq, they will be replaced by privately contracted soldiers from Dyncorp and Xe Services, which was formerly called Blackwater, until reports of massacres and other negative publicity led them to change their name. This is, in effect, the privatization of the war on terror. So, the question for me is, are things actually any better, or did they just take a major turn for the worse? As far as I understand the situation, the U.S. government (taxpayers) is still paying for the contracted services of these private armed forces, the men and women fighting will still be citizens of the U.S. and other countries currently fighting ( so there will still be casualties, parents will still lose children, and children will still lose parents), the corporations behind these armed forces are less accountable to the American public than even the American military is, and they have a reputation for being less concerned with civilian well being in those places where they are sent to do America's dirty work.

Is this the future of war then? I can't say I'm surprised, but I am disappointed. When the American people demand an end to the war and a withdrawal of the troops, they mean exactly that, an end to the war. They don't want to pay for a conflict the U.S. never should have started in the first place, and exploiting a loophole in the system to end a conflict without actually ending it is a dirty move on the part of the Obama administration.