Mercenaries By Any Other Name…
The United States doesn’t hire mercenaries. We hire “private military contractors” to do our dirty work. Perhaps the most nefarious of these companies is Blackwater USA, which now goes by Xe — a meaningless name that sounds like it could just as well be a cable channel dedicated to cartoons. More poisonous and distasteful than what might be mentally associated with “black water” are what Blackwater has been charged with doing Iraq — including the massacre of over a dozen innocent Iraqis — all in the name of its employer, the U.S. government. A lot of what we know about Blackwater’s misdeeds we know thanks to Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist for The Nation. In his latest bombshell, Scahill reports on charges made against Blackwater in sworn dispositions by an ex-employee and an erstwhile Marine who worked as a security agent for the firm. The accusations range from using child prostitutes to destroying evidence to murdering, both directly and indirectly, informants who attempted to aid the government in investigating Blackwater. The charges reach as high as Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a zealous far-right Christian with ties to Christian Freedom International, an organization whose aim is “help those who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ.” Prince is accused with seeing the U.S. mission in Iraq not so much as one of liberation as a modern-day Crusade, with the goal of killing Muslims and obliterating the Islamic faith.
Blackwater has responded by decrying “offensive” claims made by anonymous individuals that are unsubstantiated. However, it must be pointed out that these allegations were not leaked to the press “off the record”, with no hard consequences if they just made things up; they come from sworn statements which were made under the penalty of perjury. Considering that they are indicting Blackwater with murdering informants, it hardly comes as a surprise that they would choose to conceal their identities to protect themselves. When a Mafia witness makes the understandable choice to hide his or her name and face in order to safeguard his or her well-being as well as his or her loved ones, we do not question it. We should therefore be willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to those who would shield themselves from legal killers just as we would for those securing themselves from illegal ones. Besides that, what exactly are these claimants getting out of the false testimony, if that is what it is? They’re not being invited on the networks by sticking to the shadows. If they’re disgruntled employees, wouldn’t it make more sense to invent something they could win a lawsuit over, rather than just tarnishing a company name that is already associated with heinous war profiteering?
As to the lack of hard evidence, one would expect that the government or the mainstream media would jump on these claims (as well as the numerous misdeeds uncovered by Scahill) and dig deeper with the ample resources (and in the case of the government, legal powers) to settle just how much is fiction and how much is fact. As it happens, the accusation of weapon smuggling made in the affidavits does have some weight to it, as there was an ABC story in 2008 about Blackwater sneaking assault weapons and silencers into Iraq (deemed “offensive weapons” by the State Department and thus inappropriate for Blackwater’s work) in sacks of dog food. But such an exposé is rare, and the onerous task of sifting through Blackwater’s mountain of misdeeds has largely fallen on Scahill’s shoulders. Who did a piece on Blackwater expanding from unaccountable mercenary corps to unaccountable intelligence agency, offering itself as private CIA to Fortune 500 companies? Scahill. Who wrote about Blackwater’s efforts to to silence its victims in Iraq, as well as their families and the lawyers struggling for justice? Scahill. It’s not enough for Keith Olbermann to have Scahill on his show to discuss these things. MSNBC and the other outlets should be following Scahill’s lead and do their jobs.
And what about the government? An ingenuous observer would very well want to know why the Obama administration, which has expressed shock and horror at the mistakes made in Iraq, has not not delved into this particular can of worms. You might as well ask when the prosecutions for torture are going to start. It would be bad enough if the Obama White House was sticking its head in the sand over what Blackwater did in the past, but in reality, it has been only too happy to continue a relationship with the company. In February of this year, when the economic crisis was still very acute, Obama paid out roughly $70 million for Blackwater for services in Iraq, splashing the cash even when the State Department was putting distance between it and Blackwater and the Iraqi government was demanding it be banned from the country. It is one thing to go on a public relations tour, reaching out to the Muslim world, and another thing to take meaningful action to show we are hearing the protests expressed by a direct victim of our reckless foreign policy. The continued utilization of mercenaries by the U.S. in the Middle East can be grouped along with the torture at Bagram Air Base, the drones in Pakistan and the refusal to release photos of detainee abuses as opportunities where Obama could have broke with Bush but decided not to.
The lesson that Blackwater offers to all nations, not just ours, is that mercenaries should not be used in the 21st century. They operate according to their own practices and procedures, with interests that are private rather than public. They operate outside the standards demanded of those who wear official uniforms, practicing their lethal craft in a gray area where virtually everything is allowed. Really, the case of Blackwater is one of the most damning indictments of neoliberalism available, as it shows just how ugly things can get when you hive off the most important responsibilities given to our leaders to non-state entities that place contracts and profits above the welfare of the many. There are just some things that should not be entrusted to the private sector. Fortunately, for all the privatization the United States has experienced, we can still influence the government through our activism and our votes. Unfortunately, just because we side with the candidate that promised change does not mean that we will necessarily get it.
Here are the original source links in PDF format.
http://www.burkeoneil.com/view_file…/file/pleadings Exhibit G
http://www.burkeoneil.com/view_file…/file/pleadings Exhibit H
