By DAN CARSEN
Privatization. It's a logical outgrowth of the belief that government can do little, if anything, right. That belief, as common in Alabama as football fans, is at the core of corporate conservative politics. It's probably a good mind-set to start with, but the world is a complicated, case-by-case place. There are some arenas where the government really should run the show.
Jeremy Scahill's award-winning "Blackwater:
The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" tackles one of
those arenas: the conduct of war.
The book starts in Baghdad's Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, when by almost all accounts, a Blackwater convoy used heavy weapons on unarmed civilians in the middle of the day. Mothers, fathers, children, doctors, lawyers and others were killed, 17 in all, with 20 wounded. Scahill's account feels much "closer" than the equivocal, sanitized stuff we got in the mainstream media. It's easy to hear figures representing faraway deaths of people we don't know; it's harder to read about a father picking pieces of his son's skull from the back of his car. Five Blackwater guards eventually were indicted, but the case was dismissed, enraging Iraqis and prompting the U.S. Justice Department to announce a long-shot appeal. Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services after the bad publicity.
That example of contractor violence was one of few egregious enough to register here at home. I used to think I was "following" the Iraq war, but Scahill's encyclopedic book is a sharp jab of reality for me. Ditto for Afghanistan, the "War on Terror," the "War on Drugs," and the Hurricane Katrina response (yes, Blackwater/Xe has branched out). The book also sheds light on how our government awards contracts and spends money in general. "Sausage-making in the dark" is too pretty a description.
Scahill paints a picture of increasing reliance by the federal government on private, secretive security outfits. At home and abroad, there are heavily armed men -- paid with our tax dollars but not subject to military rules -- executing, creating and modifying U.S. policy on the ground, without accountability. In Iraq, Paul Bremer actually granted contractors total immunity from prosecution. Think "wild West" with fewer sheriffs, deadlier weapons and cultural misunderstandings.
At times, there were as many private contractors as military personnel in Iraq. Even without that many contractors, these arrangements allow our leaders to wage wars the people don't want. Decisions with enormous ramifications and costs are made under cover of state secrecy or a company's proprietary information. Killings of (or by) contractors aren't included in government statistics and are rarely reported, at least here. The situation is costly in terms of lives, America's image and dollars, but not commensurately costly to the politicians and players involved.
Speaking of costs, citizens concerned by wasteful, unaccountable or powerful government are ignoring the armed elephant in the room: Compared to the sum total of huge, secret security contracts, health care and cap-and-trade initiatives are benign potatoes. Even so, Blackwater has been caught allegedly defrauding the government (aka stealing millions of our tax dollars). Recently, former employees alleged Blackwater swindled the government through bogus receipts, double-billing for travel, and billing for prostitutes and strippers (file under "morale").
Speaking of costs and morale, security contractors offer salaries higher than military pay. This gives our men and women another reason to take their skills elsewhere and hurts morale. Actually, it hurts them: Locals who've been abused by gun-toting Americans don't differentiate between Armed American Group X and Armed American Group Y. The result is less trust and more incoming ammo for U.S. military and local forces, who stay after contractors leave. One would think in Alabama -- always in the top 10 for percentage of population serving -- that would trigger outrage.
Scahill's book pulls the covers off an increasingly ubiquitous system that benefits a few at the expense of accountability, military restraint, fiscal responsibility, and human lives. If you care about foreign policy, if you care about government spending, if you know anyone in the military or contractor force, read Blackwater and spread the word.
We Americans reach back to the Founding Fathers to support any argument. But those forward-thinking men undeniably created a government (they weren't anarchists), which implies they wanted a government to do something. They even spelled out the roles of its branches with regard to war to ensure wars weren't easily entered.
Our system of privatized warfighting bypasses that brake. And it's too ripe for abuse to accept just because we mistakenly believe its consequences are elsewhere.
Dan Carsen is a writer and editor who lives in Birmingham. E-mail: [email protected].