No Blackwater

dr. elsewhere here

Been gone so long looks like chaos to me.

No excuses and no explanations for my absence, except that too much has been happening, too fast and furious to keep up with, much less opine about in writing. Given how expertly Joe carries the day, every day, there seems no imperative to add to his pearls.

But today I actually have a few minutes and thought I’d start a re-entry process with a post on a matter that I started collecting a little data on a few weeks ago, and that has now been resurrected in the back pages of the news.

Most of the world knows Blackwater only as the employer of the four men who were brutally ambushed in Fallujah about a year after the US invaded. In late March, I saw Jeremy Scahill interviewed on Democracy Now! about his latest book on the privatization of our military, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. In that hour, he explained how this event was not isolated, and goes on to describe the sprawl and nature of the company and its founders.

The interview is well worth the watch, but briefly, Scahill recounts how Blackwater has garnered over three-quarters of a billion dollars in US government contracts that focus on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also include a security contract in post-Katrina NOLA.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Scahill’s concerns are numerous and weighty. First of all, he voices alarm at the extent of privatization; whereas the public and the press are generally aware that we have 126,000 troops in Iraq, what no one is reporting is the fact that there are currently over 100,000 members of private military companies (PMCs) there. Given that this figure is almost half the total number of US ‘representatives’ in Iraq, it becomes clear that (a) the mission in Iraq – whatever the hell it might be – is heavily dependent on the PMC presence there and (b) the ‘surge’ number of 21,000 extra troops (which of course has since almost doubled, and counting) becomes even more paltry by comparison.

Second,Scahill shares the fact that these contractors often earn ten times what the soldiers earn, sometimes as much in a month as the soldiers take home in a year. This has built up an enormous level of resentment among the soldiers, especially when added to the fact that the contractors are virtually always better equipped and more rested.

Third, and this by no means ends his concerns, Scahill notes that these contractors are accountable to no one, not the military, not Iraq, not American laws. Senator Lindsay Graham of SC has recently inserted language to the military spending bill that would make PMCs accountable to the military, but we are now looking at over four years of unfettered abuses out there, replete with the hatred and hostility these have inevitably – and likely irrevocably – instilled in the Iraqi people.

Scahill was particularly appalled at the extent of these operations, and referred to it as a Praetorian guard, not just for Iraq, presumably, but for “American interests,” overseas and stateside.

This week, Scahill joined Robert Greenwald to testify before the House Appropriations Subcomittee on Defense about the abuses of defense contracting, and during their testimony, Scahill emphasized a point that had come to mind after watching his DN! interview in March.

Follows my take on Scahill’s point.

The PMC problem could provide us with a simple, albeit backdoor (fitting, no?), means for ending our presence in Iraq. The fact is, this mercenary army we’ve created is so outside our traditional principles that we truly must rid ourselves of what has become a deadly dependency on a private army. Moreover, in the relentless pursuit to privatize everything, we have now farmed out damn near every aspect of our military; how can this possibly be a good thing? It seems to invite all manner of treason, especially given so many who have no loyalty to our country.

Given these concerns, among many others Scahill and Greenwald expressed, we should actively encourage Congress – in particular the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense (Murtha is the subcommittee chair (202-225-2847) – to withdraw all funding to PMC ground troops and security immediately.

This act would accomplish several things. One, the debate would expose our dependency on a mercenary army to the public, a highly unsavory prospect to this administration. Two, it would force the administration to admit the billions of dollars that have gone, not to our soldiers or their protection, but to mercenaries, many of them not even American citizens or residents. Three, the Democrats would not be accused of withholding funding to our troops; quite the opposite. Four, removing the PMC forces would essentially halve our presence in Iraq, the first step toward full withdrawal.

The down side of course is that reducing our presence will increase exposure of our military forces to the violence there. The response to this argument will have to be that this fact fully galvanizes the need to withdraw; how can we justify occupying a country that demands so much of our citizens, our soldiers, and our integrity?

And the debate to this end would not even require mention of the disturbing connection between these PMCs and rightwing Christian nationalism. Though responsibility to the truth and preservation of our democracy certainly require it. One step at a time, though.

Just another phone call to make to Congress, folks; could be a crucial one.