Blackwater Guards Finally Face Justice
The five Blackwater security guards accused of the gruesome murder of 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in September 2007 — including a mother and infant whose bodies were reportedly fused together in the burning hull of their car — will finally face justice. They turned themselves in this morning to authorities in Utah. Only one of the guards lives in Utah, but word is their lawyers felt the men would get a more sympathetic jury there. A fight over venue with federal prosecutors is expected.
[UPDATE : A federal judge has since ruled that the guards cannot be tried in friendly Utah, rather the case will be heard in Washington D.C]
In Iraq, they are hailing an end to the arrogant swagger of what became — unfairly or not — the prototypical American private security man. Not only are these the first serious federal charges to be brought against American contractors (two preliminary investigations of the incident by the FBI and military have reportedly found the Blackwater guards were not fired upon like they claim, that in fact, the civilians were unarmed), but under the new Status of Forces Agreement, such contractors will no longer have the so-called “immunity” they’ve enjoyed since the war began. Hired mostly now by State Department diplomats who need the physical cover to get from place to place, private security services like Blackwater have largely become a symbol for our debased reputation among the Iraqi people.
In an interview I conducted in late 2007 for “Hired Guns,” a TAC report on the subject of private security contractors in Iraq, I talked to U.S servicemen on and off the record about how the cowboy antics of the private goons — everything from barreling through town in their Humvees without a care for who was in the way, to firing indiscriminately on civilian cars in traffic — put everyone at risk, even U.S military who oftentimes found themselves the brunt of Iraqi anger and humiliation.
“They (private security)don’t have to explain themselves. We’ve all witnessed them shooting up cars, and then they just drive off in their SUVs, wearing their ballcaps, sunglasses, and full beards. If we shot up a car, we couldn’t leave the scene for two days,” (Ret.) Marine Sgt. Nick Benas, who served in Iraq from July 2004 to March 2005, told me at the time.
“I feel that many of the contractors here have no respect for the locals and are doing a great deal of harm to our reputation,” an Army lieutenant stationed in Afghanistan e-mailed to me.
For Iraqis thousands of miles away, the prosecution of the Blackwater Five signifies a justice they were unsure our government was even capable of. To us, it is one of many lessons, and perhaps a glimmer of hope too, that our government isn’t all about covering its behind when push comes to shove, and when unchecked power turns to murder.
Now that their republican sugar daddies are out of power (office) will the mercenaries, ahem sorry, professional sodiers go back to filling the ranks of heartland militias? Go back to protecting us from the scourge of black helicopters and road signs that are secretly paving the way for the one world army to take over the US? Damn I miss the nineties and all the hard right militia conspiracy theories. Of course that was with a white guy as president.
Wait a minute. If this prosecution arises out of the same incident I’m thinking of it was one of those standard kind of situations where these private firms operate: Shepherding a few diplo’s from here to there or etc. And those situations are such that they don’t have anywhere near the kind of man-or-firepower that even a small standard U.S. army convoy/ company has. (Not to mention a probable lesser degree of ability to call in help.)
So when they get attacked they don’t have the luxury of trying to find, fix and destroy the enemy, or even hunker down and wait for help. They’re like any other small remote military force which finds itself being ambushed and as I understand it the absolutely hard-learnt and clear understanding there is you don’t hunker down and start pondering chess moves. You go ape and start shooting at anything and everything that seems any kind of threat so you can get your ass out of there as fast as you can, period, because literally every second you remain there is on the side of the enemy and not you and a matter of minutes means you might get wiped out to a man. You just don’t have the luxury of doing anything else, period.
That’s not to say that maybe nobody did take a first shot at these particular guys and that maybe—maybe—they even knew it and just decided to “go cyclic” because they were overly pumped up with macho or one guy was just crazy or whatever. So maybe they deserve to be convicted, I don’t know.
But let’s not forget who put them in this situation. True enough, in a way they themselves did by working for Blackwater and so “volunteering.” But the U.S. government hired them and wanted them there too and knows damn well the calculus of such situations. Indeed, most of those Blackwater guys probably were former U.S. servicemen or officers or etc.
So the U.S. says “hey, shepherd this package for us safely around Baghdad” knowing what that means, and then when the inevitable happens—even in an absolutely clearly justified firefight in such situations there’s going to be lots of civilian casualties and damage—we are supposed to forget that it was indeed the government that commissioned that risk?
Nuts. If it’s so concerned about such things it would have shepherded these diplo’s around via a big tank column, but it wasn’t. It knows the risks. And now—let’s not forget—it’s that same government, perhaps for pure P.R. purposes, that is saying, Claude Rains-like, how shocked, shocked it is at what happened.
But now I suppose it’s also true that the Blackwater-type people know it too and so they have no excuse in the future. They wanna work for the U.S. government, in addition to expecting money from it they can also expect whatever hypocrisy that government deems is in its interest the second things go South.
Again, this isn’t saying these Blackwater guys in particular aren’t culpable, or that these private security concerns are desirable at all. Just that there is a bigger picture out there.
There is no bigger picture. Making excuses for these monsters is dispicable. They have siphoned off over eighty billion as mercenaries. Who knows how many of them should be in prison?