Thanks to TPM for digging up the beauty above. Can there be any doubt why we’re
in this mess?
P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institute has compiled a study (pdf), “Can’t Win With ‘Em, Can’t Go To War Without ‘Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency,” that unloads the problem. There are more than 160,000 guns for hire in Iraq right now. Bush obviously never understood what was happening right under his very nose. That’s why Republicans picked him as their vessel a long time ago.
The point here is not that all contractors are “cowboys,” “unprofessional,” or “killers,” as Blackwater and other contractors are often described. Rather, most are highly talented, ex-soldiers. However, their private mission is different from the overall public operation. Those, for example, doing escort duty are going to be judged by their bosses solely on whether they get their client from point A to B, not whether they win Iraqi hearts and minds along the way. Ann Exline Starr, a former Coalition Provisional Authority adviser, de- scribed the difference between when she traveled with a military escort and with guards from Blackwater and another State Department-contracted security firm, DynCorp. While the soldiers kept her safe, they also did such things as playing cards and drinking tea with local Iraqis. The contractors, by contrast, focused only on the contract. “What they told me was, ‘Our mission is to protect the principal at all costs. If that means pissing off the Iraqis, too bad.”
This protection first and last mentality has led to many common operating practices that clearly en- rage locals. In an effort to keep potential threats away, contractors drive convoys up the wrong side of the road, ram civilian vehicles, toss smoke bombs, and fire weaponry as warnings, all as standard practices. Journalist Robert Young Pelton described his month spent embedded with Blackwater contractors in Baghdad. “They’re famous for being very aggressive. They use their machine guns like car horns.”
It makes it all the more remarkable that Democrats can’t find a way to crush
the policies now in place that are leading us further down the abyss in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
Comments are closed.