Sherry Chandler » Privatized
Privatized
“The whole face of private security changed with Iraq, and it will never go back to how it was,” said Leon Sharon, a retired Special Operations officer who commands 500 private Kurdish guards at an immense warehouse transit point for weapons, ammunition and other materiel on the outskirts of Baghdad.
Sometimes I feel as though I’m living in a bubble, a sort of Truman Show. Or maybe Cheney’s World. There’s the reality we think we’re dealing with here in the United States, the one we think we’re learning about from The News Hour. This is a reality in which the legislature debates a war over which they think somebody somewhere has some control, one in which we elect legislators based on information we perceive as the truth. And then there is the real world, especially in Iraq, about which we know absolutely nothing.
Take, for example, all those private contractors (read “mercenaries”) who are fighting great hunks of this war for us. Iraq Contractors Face Growing Parallel War, the article in the Washington Post, from which the quote above is taken, gives us a glimpse of that reality:
BAGHDAD — Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 “hostile actions” in the first four months.
The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law..
In a significant way, they operate outside our law, too. We don’t have the kind of oversight over these “contractors” that we have over our regular military. And did you notice that it’s Kurds who guard that munitions dump? Kurds are players in this war and yet we’re using them as mercenaries.
Mercenaries who are also better armed and much, much better paid than our regular army.
And I don’t know that they owe any allegiance to the United States. Do they swear to serve and protect? Do they, as Charlie Hughes did, have to memorize the Geneva Conventions? [Update: See Charlie's clarification below in the comments.]
In Iraq, much of the fighting is being done by the private militias of independent strong men. And into this mix, we throw our own private militias.
In my worst paranoid fantasies, the world is not run by governments but by multi-national corporations. That’s the frightening New World Order.
You should read this article. It is not negative to the mercenaries but somehow the whole idea frightens me:
The U.S. military has never released complete statistics on contractor casualties or the number of attacks on privately guarded convoys. ….”It was like there was a major war being fought out there, but we were the only ones who knew about it,” [Victoria] Wayne said.
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7 Comments
1. MW replies at 16th June 2007, 1:31 pm :
The whole idea of using mercenaries has bothered me from the start. You can call them private contractors all you like, but the idea is the same. And the thing about mercenaries, as Terry Pratchett points out in his 1997 novel “Jingo”, is that not only do you have to pay them to fight for you, “unless you are very lucky, you end up paying them even more to stop.” (”Jingo”, pg. 17) Then there’s the whole loyalty issue which you bring up. Even if they are asked to take an oath, and I seriously doubt that they are, I can’t say that I’d ever really trust them to uphold it. After all, these people are in it for the money, and what happens when somebody else offers them even more to fight against us? Maybe I’m not being fair in thinking this way, but I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before this rises up and bites us, too.
2. Rosalie O'Leary replies at 16th June 2007, 6:37 pm :
“In my worst paranoid fantasies, the world is not run by governments but by multi-national corporations. That’s the frightening New World Order.”
Sherry, you’re not paranoid, and it’s not a fantasy. Governments run by multi-national corporations is the new world order and it’s here, now. In trying to come to terms with this myself, I have to admit that living outside the system takes on a whole new meaning, and survival will require living an entierly new way.
I have found the writings of Joanna Macy (especially World as Lover, World as Self) very helpful and encouraging, as I begin to try to live a new way — inside or out of their new world order. And I am constantly finding many, many people who are paying attantion to this and trying to make sense of it in their own ways. I remain encouraged. — Rosalie
3. sherry replies at 17th June 2007, 10:23 am :
Oh, Rosalie, I don’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged by what you say. I cannot, however, find myself believing in the god of unfettered capitolism. And I am convinced that we’re going to have to find a new way to live or the earth will reject us. Thanks for the book recommendations.
4. Charlie Hughes replies at 17th June 2007, 11:00 am :
I probably was in error when I said that in Basic Training we “memorized” the articles of the Geneva Convention. It’s been more than a few years since then. I know we were certainly made aware of the basic provisions put forth there, in the event we should ever be captured by the enemy.
I was proud to beleive that the US would adhere to the high standards of treatment of POWs, though I recognized that our captured soldiers had received ill treatment in many instances. I believed that was a major difference between US and THEM.
5. sherry replies at 17th June 2007, 12:15 pm :
Thanks for the clarification, Charlie. I’ve drawn attention to it in the post so that I won’t be misrepresenting you. I don’t know what status these “contractors” have, whether they are in any way bound or protected by the Geneva Conventions. What keeps them from being “illegal combatants?”
6. Charles W. replies at 17th June 2007, 9:26 pm :
It was the “code of conduct” that we had to memorize, Charlie H. Oddly enough, I still remember much of it, but they have changed it a little. Charlie W.
7. Sherry Chandler » V&hellip replies at 20th June 2007, 7:16 am :
[...] A day or two ago, Rosalie commented that we must learn to live differently on the earth. Whatever one may think of multinationals, Rosalie is right to say that we must change our ways. The Earth will survive and regenerate. She has done it before. But we’re the ones who will be gone, along with our brothers and sisters the birds and raccoons. [...]
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