Jeremy ScahillThe program, as it was no doubt planned, raised serious issues about the control and accountability of these mercenaries, the cost to the U.S. government of our dependence on them rather than a citizen army, the implications in terms of our policy processes of depending on foreign mercenaries so heavily, and the risks they pose to our international reputation as well as to the people on whom they are inflicted.
Moyers raised the issue of the weak coverage of Blackwater by the traditional media. I was also left with questions as to whether Scahill was confounding the corps of armed mercenaries with the more general (and larger) class of contractors in Iraq, and how important Blackwater was compared with the other corporate mercenary firms.
Scahill raises the really difficult problem of how these mercenaries can be controlled and brought under rule of law. Will the government officials they protect set the needed policies? Is it practical to enforce laws on thousands of armed and trained mercenaries in a war zone by other than military means?
He also posed a difficult political issue. These organizations, Republican lead, receive huge and very profitable government contracts, and their executives make large political contributions, which guarantee them a voice in Congressional policy making. Is this an aspect of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower would have warned against most strenuously if he could have imagined its emergence in the United States?
In retrospect, it seems to me that the emergence of multinational corporations providing mercenary military services was an obvious development of globalization. After all, the multinational corporation is our current best model for the organization of management, and mercenaries have been around for millennia. But I admit, I had not thought about the phenomenon.
I wonder what will be the unforseen consequences of the use of these corporate mercenaries in Iraq and other areas. Will they be as bad as those from the use of Islamic militants to fight the Russians in Afghanistan -- a policy that resulted in the rise of the Taliban and the supply of military trained people to fuel insurgencies and terrorism in many lands. Blackwater is apparently recruiting and training mercenaries from Chile and Colombia (as well as many other countries). What will they do after they are no longer needed in the current war zones? Where will the corporate mercenaries offer their services next, and for what purposes?
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