What If Our Mercenaries Turn on Us?
By Chris Hedges
The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday 03 June 2007
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 [again].
-------- Chris Hedges ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is author, mostly
recently, of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
Hedges is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and won a Pulitzer Prize as a
foreign correspondent for the New York Times.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407J.shtml
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