Blackwater contracts renewed

If you’ve not have yet read Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, consider picking up a copy. Wolf outlines the ten escalating steps to a fascist government regime, drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy with the last eight years of the Bush regime. It’s disturbing how history repeats itself; more disturbing is how suppression of a society’s freedom goes unnoticed when it is achieved through subtle progressive steps.

Rule Number 3 is the establishment of a paramilitary force. The Bush administration has heavily relied on private security forces in Iraq because of a shortage of American soliders. According to Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

there’s some 100,000 contractors—I actually think there are probably more than that. That’s a strangely round number. But the fact of the matter is that we know from internal government audits that were done on the Iraq occupation that there are some 48,000 employees of private mercenary companies operating in Iraq right now. (Truthdig, March 2007)

The US government is dependent upon these private firms because of the shortage of qualified enlistees, as well as the ability to plug and play, since many of these guns-for-hire were originally trained by the US armed forces or law enforcement. (Good Magazine provides a great graphic depiction of just how unpopular enrolling to serve in Iraq is)

Per Wolf’s research,

The company’s lawyers argue that Blackwater can’t be held accountable to the Pentagon’s Uniform code of Military Justice because its soldiers are civilians. But they can’t be sued in civil court either — because they are part of the U.S. military. (p.75)

Hence the power that private security companies give the parties holding the purse strings.

And what these companies do is they give the Bush administration extraordinary political cover. Their deaths don’t get counted, their injuries don’t get counted, their crimes don’t get reported, they don’t get investigated, they don’t get prosecuted. (Scahill interview, Truthdig, March 2007)

At the moment, security contractors are posted in unsavory locations, so American don’t really appreciate the sort of damage a team of elite mercenaries can do with that free license. Iraq’s budding government wants Blackwater out of its country after finding a group of the private soldiers murdered civilians without repercussion last fall.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government accepted the findings of an Iraqi investigative committee that determined Blackwater guards, without provocation, killed 17 Iraqis last month in Nisoor Square in western Baghdad. . .

The officials said the Cabinet decided Tuesday to establish a committee to find ways to repeal a 2004 directive issued by L. Paul Bremer, chief of the former U.S. occupation government in Iraq. The order placed private security companies outside Iraqi law. . .

The Iraqi probe into the Sept. 16 shooting found that Blackwater personnel guarding a State Department convoy opened fire on Iraqis without reason. Blackwater said its men came under fire first, although no witnesses have been found to corroborate the claim. The guards involved have been isolated and have not been available to comment. (San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 2007)

Our highly efficient government is still “investigating” the incident, so renewing the Blackwater contract was A-OK to them, while Iraqi officials’ protests were ignored.

Imagine hiring Blackwater forces to shore up Homeland Security, a team of trained mercenaries whose contracts allow for little oversight and less prosecution in the event of law breaking. We care little of contractor infractions overseas, so that precedent would likely follow back to the US, which would be the next step in building up a private military force that could quell average Americans and make us afraid to protest injustices out of fear of unpunishable retribution.

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