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Checkbook Imperialism: The Blackwater Fiasco
Please, please, I tell myself, leave Orwell out of it. Find some other, fresher way to explain why "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is dependent upon killer mercenaries. Or why the "democratically elected government" of "liberated" Iraq does not explicitly have the legal power to expel Blackwater USA from its land or hold any of the 50,000 private contractor troops that the U.S. government has brought to Iraq accountable for their deadly actions.
Were there even the faintest trace of Iraqi independence rising from the ashes of this failed American imperialist venture, Blackwater would have to fold its tents and go, if only in the interest of keeping up appearances. After all, the Iraqi Interior Ministry claimed that the Blackwater thugs guarding a U.S. State Department convoy through the streets of Baghdad fired "randomly at citizens" in a crowded square on Sunday, killing 11 people and wounding 13 others. So the Iraqi government has ordered Blackwater to leave the country after what a government spokesman called a "flagrant assault ... on Iraqi citizens."
But who told those Iraqi officials that they have the power to control anything regarding the 182,000 privately contracted personnel working for the U.S. in Iraq? Don't they know about Order 17, which former American proconsul Paul Bremer put in place to grant contractors, including his own Blackwater bodyguards, immunity from Iraqi prosecution? Nothing has changed since the supposed transfer of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority, which Bremer once headed, to the Iraqi government holed up in the Green Zone and guarded by Blackwater and other "private" soldiers.
They are "private" in the same fictional sense that our uniformed military is a "volunteer" force, since both are lured by the dollars offered by the same paymaster, the U.S. government. Contractors earn substantially more, despite $20,000 to $150,000 signing bonuses and an all-time-high average annual cost of $100,000 per person for the uniformed military. All of this was designed by the neocon hawks in the Pentagon to pursue their dreams of empire while avoiding a conscripted army, which would have millions howling in the street by now in protest.
Instead, we have checkbook imperialism. The U.S. government purchases whatever army it needs, which has led to the dependence upon private contract firms like Blackwater USA, with its $300-million-plus contract to protect U.S. State Department personnel in Iraq. That is why the latest Blackwater incident, which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki branded a "crime," is so difficult to deal with. Iraqis are clearly demanding to rid their country of Blackwater and other contractors, and on Tuesday the Iraqi government said it would be scrutinizing the status of all private security firms working in the country.
But the White House hopes the outrage will once again blow over. As the Associated Press reported on Monday: "The U.S. clearly hoped the Iraqis would be satisfied with an investigation, a finding of responsibility and compensation to the victim's families--and not insist on expelling a company that the Americans cannot operate here without." Or, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified to the U.S. Senate last week: "There is simply no way at all that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts."
Consider the irony of that last statement--that the U.S. experiment in building democracy in Iraq is dependent upon the same garrisons of foreign mercenaries that drove the founders of our own country to launch the American Revolution. As George Washington warned in his farewell address, once the American government enters into these "foreign entanglements," we lose the Republic, because public accountability is sacrificed to the necessities of war for empire.
Despite the fact that Blackwater USA gets almost all of its revenue from the U.S. government--much of it in no-bid contracts aided, no doubt, by the lavish contributions to the Republican Party made by company founder Erik Prince and his billionaire parents--its operations remain largely beyond public scrutiny. Blackwater and others in this international security racket operate as independent states of their own, subject neither to the rules of Iraq nor the ones that the U.S. government applies to its own uniformed forces. "We are not simply a 'private security company,' " Blackwater boasts on its corporate website. "We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm. ... We have become the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere."
Yeah, so who elected you guys to run the world?
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Blackwater by Bush's own Executive orders, should be designated as illegal combatants. Their police state antics and brutality, and killings of thousands of Iraqi Civilians are aiding Iraqi insurgent feelings towards American troops and that is documented. Why isn't the United Nations jumping on this? Security for transport is one thing, but this is BS. It is way over the top. The World's Nations clearly needs to Censure the U.S. for its illegal occupation, and this Unconstitutional provision to have Goon Squads running all over Iraq, and they can't do anything about it? What Sovereign National President can't tell some company's private employees to get the hell out of their country? You think Bush/Cheney would tolerate a law like that? The Iraqis really need to reach out to their fellow Arab States and get us out of there, since our politicians won't, and get on with the rebuilding of Their country, and their lives. They don't need America, and they are better off to work on things amoung themselves, and we all know it. All the Arabs need to boycottt oil going to America until we leave the Middle East.
Checkbook Imperalism- George Bush all his life has been spending other people's money. As President, he just has a higher credit limit to play with- unlimited, in fact.
I have always said that the best way for the dems to stop the war is to offer a bill that pays our AMERICAN TROOPS the same amount of pay that BLACKWATER THUGS receive- yep, that would do it!
How could anyone say that
BLACKWATER is more important than U.S. Troops?
How could Republicans support that bill because it would be a budget buster in their vernacular?
How could Dems catch flack for 'supporting our American hero troops'?
How could the old white fascist Republican congress and senate members survive with the heart attacks that would surely occur?
WHY SHOULDN'T OUR TROOPS AND THEIR FAMILIES GET AS MUCH MONEY AS THE BLACKWATER THUGS????
Who could say no to that and those that did would NOT be supporting the troops!
A bill like that would surely BANKRUPT WHAT IS LEFT OF AMERICA's TREASURY FOR THE RIGHT REASON OR PEOPLE WOULD BEGIN TO SEE THE FOLLY AND FUTILITY OF HAVING TROOPS IN IRAQ!
The Iraqi government should not be satisfied until those Blackwater mercenaries who are responsible for the killings are prosecuted in Iraqi courts. Imagine a private army roaming American streets killing at their own discretion. It's almost enough to start a revolution over!
And supposedly there were Blackwater employees hired to provide security in New Orleans after the hurricane. When we have private armies responding to natural disasters in this country, then we are in real trouble.
Every empire has had its mercs, Egypt had the Nubians, Assyrians, Libyans and Canaanites, Rome had the Celts, Britain had Hessians and Gurkhas, Greece had Thracians and Persians had Greeks, Japan had the Saika, the Byzantines had Vikings, and the Chinese had Americans (to name but a few).
When an empire gets too comfortable or too lazy to fight its own battles it hires others to do it for them. This is a sure sign of its imminent demise.
We're Rome in the late 2nd Century, living off past glories and deluding ourselves.
Blackwater, aka PISSWATER, is one more excuse in Bush-Cheney's "chain of privatization". They like having a PRIVATE "ARMY" to run their GOP Republican wars, now and in the future.
It's about THE BOTTOM LINE, stupid: shoveling USTaxpayer money out of USTreasury and into pockets of ultra-rich GOP supporter pals, corporate welfare queens, big oil, Katrina disaster opportunists, corporate criminals, lying, cheating and stealing "unaccountable" contractors.
Terrorism is supposed to SUBSTITUTE for Communism as the "big scare" to justify CHRONIC SPENDING of tax money into corporate pockets. They're laughing all the way to the bank at HOW STUPID we AMERICANS really are.
Joseph Palermo has an excellent essay/post on this private little army.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/blackwater_b_65053.html
In order to be a mercenary you have to be morally challenged. Of course that goes for signing up with the U.S. military also.
Mercenaries: Under Article 47 of Protocol I (Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts) it is stated in the first sentence "A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war."
On 4 December 1989 the United Nations passed resolution 44/34 the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It entered into force on 20 October 2001 and is usually known as the UN Mercenary Convention. Article 2 makes it an offence to employ a mercenary and Article 3.1 states that "A mercenary, as defined in article 1 of the present Convention, who participates directly in hostilities or in a concerted act of violence, as the case may be, commits an offence for the purposes of the Convention.
When Blackwater USA comes home, what then?
When Blackwater mercenaries return to the US they will apply the lessons learned in Iraq to the U.S. They will foment sectarian violence, perhaps between pro-and anti-abortionists, then take sides, killing the opposition. When Blackwater's corporate partners are threatened, say with an investigation brought by a whistle-blower, Blackwater mercenaries will assassinate the whistle-blower and any citizens unfortunate enough to be witnesses, and then they'll assassinate the investigators.
When Blackwater mercenaries run out of money, they will rob a central bank, as they did in Iraq. When they are hungry they'll shoot up a Macdonalds and be fed for free. Oh, and when they get horney, they'll fuck the wife and daughters in front of the husband and brothers and then murder everyone.
Bush, who will still be president even though it's 2010 by this time, because Blackwater wants it that way, will issue an apology, stage a phony investigation, and send a worthless check to the victims' relatives. Secretly, he will view videos of the atrocity.
Man, You piss me off...
Everytime I read one of your collumns, I get so pissed off. Not at you, of course, but the facts that you present in a quite forthright and delibrate manner.
It's why I appreciate your collumns. People need to get pissed off at what's going on in this country and the world, and what's being done by leaders of this country. Rather, by idiots we have the great misfortune of being stuck with runnin' things.
It's now been reported that up to 20 people were killed in that Blackwater drive-by. There's been pictures released of a mother's infant stuck to her, burned in a car with the father after they opened fire on them. Another vehicle machine gunned was a small bus full of young schoolgirls. No one around heard any shots or explosions before the full-on fire volley. Turns out the couple's car simply didn't get out of the way far enough, so they immediately thought it was a carbomb suicide. Idiots. Remorseless, murderin' idiots.
Meanwhile, we all know that bush's minions are on the phone with Iraq, saying, "So what do ya want- How much to let this blow over?"
To those it may concern:
I'm getting sick and tired of the censorship. Especially when there is *NO* attack on anyone. Ya had better find and get rid of those who are doing this censorship.
If Maliki was smart he would just hire them for a higher price to fight Americans,The paycheck is their only loyalty...
There's an important issue that people seem to miss. When the White House asks for money to "support the troops" WHICH TROOPS DO THEY MEAN?
The Congress should demand to know where all the money they already spent REALLY WENT before give Bush anymore. They can't be blamed for abandoning the troops if little of the money is going to them anyway.
I am sure that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) will soon call hearings on the use of Blackwater USA and other mercenaries in Iraq and elsewhere (Colombia and Peru come to mind) as a tactical weapon of US foreign policy.
We have to face the fact that Iraq is not a sovereign country nor is Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the governing head of government. US Ambassador Ryan Crocker is the vice-roy. To save our Republic, this Empire must be dismantled. Chalmers Johnson, my former Professor at UCSD's IRPS, has written extensively on the threat to freedoms at home from this ever-growing serpent of empire that is devouring resources the world over. Please tell me why we need troops in Germany 62 years after the end of WW II? It is only a handful of countries that have managed to oust a US military presence (the Philippines, Vietnam and Ecuador come to mind). We have troops in Paraguay for god's sake. And trust me, should Republican rule continue it will only be a matter of time before Blackwater USA is deployed in the USA. This company must be dismantled.
factanonverba, Hearings that do what.? Get every body together so that after the dog and pony show they can all go out for dinner and a drink. Dismantle Congress and the bushwa gang, then start over with proper checks and balances.
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