Rise of the Mercenary
Why the Blackwater debacle only scratches the surface
So there I was, nursing a hangover in a sandwich shop somewhere in Central Lakeview, decked out in a wardrobe that consisted of shin-length red and black basketball shorts, high-socks, a wife-beater, and the open button-up shirt I might have been wearing in a bar the night before. I think there was a mustard stain involved as well.
It was easily the worst outfit I’ve ever worn in my entire life, and that might even include a streak in high school when I wore the same white T-shirt and blue jeans ensemble for two straight years.
However, I could not care less about the stares from women, who were clearly thanking their lucky stars that the advent of birth control would likely prevent my seed from spreading another generation of poorly-dressed men-children, because I was deeply engrossed with my friend as we tried to think of the last army in history to employ mercenaries on a large scale in a major military conflict.
Two history degrees between us, we pontificated on the question until our sandwiches arrived and were able to come up with only two examples that rivaled the American military in Iraq: the Hessians the British sent after the Revolutionary army and the late Roman empire as it began to crumble along its expansive borders—two very unappealing comparisons, to be sure.
Here’s the deal: From the initial invasion of Iraq through the present calamitous bed of quicksand in which we have sunk up to our nipples, the Bush administration has supplemented the American military with private security contractors from corporations like DynCorp, Triple Canopy, and Blackwater. There have been between 40 and 60 different firms operating in Iraq throughout the course of the war and the number of personnel has hovered in the ballpark of 20,000, which makes it the second largest fighting force in Iraq after the American military.
Of course, I bring all of this up only because recently Blackwater has found itself in the limelight for killing what it claims were insurgents, but what witnesses say were innocent civilians—somewhere in the ballpark of 17 dead and 24 wounded. The Iraqi government immediately called for Blackwater to get the hell out of their country, yet the firm remains, guarding American diplomats and patrolling Iraq’s streets with complete impunity.
Blackwater, of course, is not going anywhere. As a test of the Iraqi government’s sovereignty and independence, this was like handing an eight-grader a crayon and asking him to successfully draw a square, only to look down and find half a circle grafted to a rhombus. The Bush administration needs Blackwater for the VIPs that the overstretched American military cannot properly safeguard. This incident is important to take note of, as likely it will mark yet another chapter in the strange and terrible story of the rise of the 21st century corporate mercenary.
A relatively new phenomenon, privatized military contractors have only been around since the 1990’s, and if they don’t already scare the living shit out of you, perhaps I can help.
The disturbing rise of the gun-for-hire began in earnest with the Bush administration, and this development mirrors some of this president’s worst, most anti-democratic tendencies. To this day, military contractors exist beyond the law. Reports have these private soldiers opening up fire indiscriminately on civilians, running people down with their vehicles, and otherwise generally terrorizing Iraqis, sometimes for seemingly no reason other than their own testosterone-fueled, look-how-big-my-dick-is-and-what-I-can-kill-with-it madness. One New York Times article reported a Blackwater employee who claimed his superior shot a man dead while on patrol and then explained that he “Just felt like killing something.” Another Blackwater employee escaped the country without charges after drunkenly murdering the bodyguard of an Iraqi politician on Christmas eve.
With multiple allegations of misconduct and large doses of resentment from the regular Army—which has worked so hard to win back Iraqi hearts and minds—not a single member of Blackwater has ever faced any charges. As designated by the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, private contractors do not fall under Iraqi jurisdiction. Neither, however, do they fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which would take care of an over-zealous Marine who gunned down twenty people in cold blood. Instead, these corporate soldiers exist in an unprosecutable limbo, answering to no one except the shareholders.
One might think this a disastrous legal oversight, but I’ll tell you right now the likelihood that somehow this little discrepancy escaped the eyes of the entire executive branch of our government is roughly the same as the likelihood that after wearing my wife-beater/ basketball shorts combo, I went home and had a threesome with Jessicas Biel and Alba.
I’ll save you the suspense: I went home, ate my sandwich, watched football, and got into a heated debate with my friend as to whether it’s better to be—if you had to choose—a prostitute or a hobo (I went with hobo because then you can wear basketball shorts and wife-beaters everywhere without raising eyebrows). Likewise, there is no goddamn way the Bush administration views the legal immunity of the private army in Iraq as anything but a tool. They have encouraged and applied this bizarre design to fit their own skewed approach to the “war on terror.”
Case in point, what the American public remembers from the Abu Graib scandal is a few feckless hicks sexually tormenting hooded Iraqi captives, and a few low-level scapegoats will forever be the face of that scandal. However, what has gone underreported is the interrogations performed by “khakis”, which is slang for private military interrogators: In other words, men employed by corporate entities to torture information out of suspects. With no actual allegiance to American principles, let alone laws, these mercenaries are useful for the jobs the American military can’t legally perform. They can torture where the military can’t. They can aggressively defend convoys with lethal force where the American military would have to show restraint. They can do the dirty work.
And all of this scares the piss out of me in fast, uncontrollable rivers. The whole point of a democracy is to have civilian control over the military. More than patriotic companies trying to earn an honest dollar, firms like Blackwater represent the paramilitary groups used by right-wing dictatorships to do the dirt for which the governments need plausible deniability in the court of world opinion.
The congress needs to immediately bring private contractors employed by the U.S. government under the UCMJ, but beyond that, roll back military privatization. Defenders like to throw out the utterly absurd argument that privatization saves taxpayers money because the free market can dictate lower prices through competition. This is the kind of idiocy that freshman economics majors like to stroke themselves to, but in practice these firms have been charging the government insane amounts of money because the only way the can attract private soldiers is to pay them an assload (if you haven’t heard, Iraq is not an ideal working environment). In addition, the phenomenon is leading to the brain drain of our military because why the hell would you want to go risk your life for your country and shitty benefits when you can do so for great benefits and $400-$1000 a day?
Finally, after Katrina, New Orleans saw the use of Blackwater teams on the ground, and if the idea of an officially ungoverned military body patrolling American soil does not loosen your bladder, you’re not hydrating yourself properly.
Send all correspondence to hatemail@stephenmarkley.com. If you wish to join the listserv and be notified of each new column, simply e-mail the request. Our staff will process it within 24-48 hours, depending on what's on TV that night.
NEW: Waste your day reading an excerpt from "A Land I Saw in My Dreams": "Tales from Vancouver"
Home Biography Work