[NYTr] Chris Hedges: What If Our Mercenaries Turn on Ud?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

posted by Andrea Ball (activ-l) - Sep 19, 2007

Philadelphia Inquirer - Jun 3, 2007
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20070603_What_if_our_mercenaries_turn_on_us_.html

What If Our Mercenaries Turn on Us?

By Chris Hedges

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 o 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 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.]


Reposted by TruthOut Jun 4, 2007 here: 
(despite the weird URL, it was in 2007, not 2006)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407J.shtml