Sure, He's Got Guns for Hire. But They're Just Not Worth It.

¿ Forces policymakers to jettison promising counterinsurgency strategies before they even have a chance to succeed. The success or failure of the troop "surge" hinges on senior U.S. officials' ability to pressure the Iraqi government to share power more effectively and reach other political benchmarks. Instead of doing so, you and President Bush are now having to ask for Iraqi help and understanding to clean up the aftermath of the Blackwater fiasco.

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Those vested in the system will try to persuade you to ignore this cycle, to pass off an obvious pattern as mere anomalies. At the hearings, the owner of a private firm, outside the chain of command, oddly described his company as somehow being "part of our nation's total force." Then State Department officials claimed that they had no choice but to outsource security tasks to Blackwater, rather than admit that they had preferred not to make choices that carried political costs. These are the denials of enablers, pushers and addicts.

The blunt truth is that while contractors are carrying out valuable roles, their overall effect has been to undermine the Iraq mission and the wider fight against terrorism. Worst of all, we have outsourced the most important core function of our government: to fight and win the nation's wars.

The U.S. government needs to go back to the drawing board on its use of private military contractors, especially regarding important armed roles in Iraq and future operations. These should again be handled by the government. This will take time, and it will mean shifting resources and personnel. But hard choices are what leaders make, not outsource.

If you and Secretary Rice prove unwilling or unable to break your departments' addictions to these hired guns, Congress will have to do it for you. After last week's hearings, the House voted overwhelmingly to shore up legal accountability for Blackwater and its brethren. This is a small start but not the final fix. Now that we can all see that the emperor has no clothes, the answer is not to kindly ask him to put on a scarf.

author@pwsinger.com

P.W. Singer is director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Corporate Warriors."