Via Mark Joseph Stern:
Another interesting grant from the Supreme Court: The justices will consider whether troops should be permitted to sue government contractors, under state law, for harmful conduct that violated military orders. (These suits should clearly be allowed IMO.)
@GottaLaff it always pissed me off that contractors, mercenaries, would get paid enormous amounts of money while our troops who were being paid so much less protected them. They should be allowed to sue.
@lillyfinch whether they should be allowed to sue is a much thornier question than pay differences, though.
Also, it's apples and oranges to compare checks written to troops against checks written to companies brought in to provide services. Not only are there differences in benefits that aren't considered there, but the management structures are vastly different.
But mainly, to say they should be allowed to sue here begins to involve all of the state courts in actions on battlefields around the world. It's a really problematic proposal.
When things like this happen, there are better ways to handle it than rushing to the local courts to order feds around.
@volkris @GottaLaff perhaps, soldiers being killed or injured while defending a company that is sucking up tax dollars is offensive to me. It smacks of war for profit at the expense of our people. Contracting is profiting off of war. It makes war a business not a necessity, which hasn’t been true since WWII. Eisenhower warned us of this. I do see your point as far as the courts. Perhaps companies should be made to compensate all injured in their defense as we try to do as a nation.
It mainly comes down to the people we elect to Congress to police this and make sure the US is conducting itself in the ways we want it to go.
If we elect representatives who agree to these military operations and fund programs to make them happen, then contractors will often make them more effective through partnerships with the standing military.
If we don't like it, we need to stop reelecting the representatives who support that direction.
It's so important to hold reps accountable, but too often they get to avoid the hard questions.
