[wvns] What if our mercenaries turn on us?
Blackwater and paramil in US
What if our mercenaries turn on us?
Chris Hedges
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-if-our-mercenaries-turn-on-us.html
Armed units from the private security firm Blackwater USA opened fire
in Baghdad streets twice in two days last week. It triggered a
standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, a reminder
that the war in Iraq may be remembered mostly in our history books for
empowering and building America's first modern mercenary army.
There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors
working in Iraq, although there are no official figures and some
estimates run much higher. Security contractors are not counted as
part of the coalition forces. When the number of private mercenary
fighters is added to other civilian military "contractors" who carry
out logistical support activities such as food preparation, the number
rises to about 126,000.
"We got 126,000 contractors over there, some of them making more than
the secretary of defense," said House defense appropriations
subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D., Pa.). "How in the hell do you
justify that?"
The privatization of war hands an incentive to American corporations,
many with tremendous political clout, to keep us mired down in Iraq.
But even more disturbing is the steady rise of this modern Praetorian
Guard. The Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome was a paramilitary force
that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political
discourse, and eventually plunged the Roman Republic into tyranny and
despotism. Despotic movements need paramilitary forces that operate
outside the law, forces that sow fear among potential opponents, and
are capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as
traitors. And in the wrong hands, a Blackwater could well become that
force.
American taxpayers have so far handed a staggering $4 billion to
"armed security" companies in Iraq such as Blackwater, according to
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry
Waxman (D., Calif.). Tens of billions more have been paid to companies
that provide logistical support. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.) of the
House Intelligence Committee estimates that 40 cents of every dollar
spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors. It is unlikely
that any of these corporations will push for an early withdrawal. The
profits are too lucrative.
Mercenary forces like Blackwater operate beyond civilian and military
law. They are covered by a 2004 edict passed by American occupation
authorities in Iraq that immunizes all civilian contractors in Iraq
from prosecution.
Blackwater, barely a decade old, has migrated from Iraq to set up
operations in the United States and nine other countries. It trains
Afghan security forces and has established a base a few miles from the
Iranian border. The huge contracts from the war - including $750
million from the State Department since 2004 - have allowed Blackwater
to amass a fleet of more than 20 aircraft, including helicopter
gunships. Jeremy Scahill, the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the
World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, points out that Blackwater has
also constructed "the world's largest private military facility - a
7,000-acre compound near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina."
Blackwater also recently opened a facility in Illinois ("Blackwater
North") and, despite local opposition, is moving ahead with plans to
build another huge training base near San Diego. The company recently
announced it was creating a private intelligence branch called "Total
Intelligence."
Erik Prince, who founded and runs Blackwater, is a man who appears to
have little time for the niceties of democracy. He has close ties with
the radical Christian Right and the Bush White House. He champions his
company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. His employees,
in an act as cynical as it is dishonest, take an oath of loyalty to
the Constitution. But what he and his allies have built is a mercenary
army, paid for with government money, which operates outside the law
and without constitutional constraint.
Mercenary units are a vital instrument in the hands of despotic
movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century
each built rogue paramilitary forces. And the appearance of Blackwater
fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms,
patrolling the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, may be a grim taste of the future. In New Orleans Blackwater
charged the government $240,000 a day.
" 'It cannot happen here' is always wrong," the philosopher Karl
Popper wrote. "A dictatorship can happen anywhere."
The word contractor helps launder the fear and threat out of a more
accurate term: "paramilitary force." We're not supposed to have such
forces in the United States, but we now do. And if we have them, we
have a potential threat to democracy. On U.S. soil, Blackwater so far
has shown few signs of being an out-and-out rogue retainer army,
though they looked the part in New Orleans. But were this country to
become even a little less stable, outfits like Blackwater might see a
heyday. If the United States falls into a period of instability caused
by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown that
triggers social unrest, or a series of environmental disasters, such
paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in
the police and military, could ruthlessly abolish what is left of our
eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to
corporations, and to right-wing interests such as the Christian Right,
could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic
weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on the
streets in New Orleans could appear on our streets.
Chris Hedges (hedgesscoop @ aol.com) is author, mostly recently, of
"American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." He is
a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and won a Pulitzer Prize as a
foreign correspondent for the New York Times
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