Checkbook Imperialism (Robert Scheer)

[cui bono]

Truthdig | posted September 19, 2007 (web only)
The Mercenary Factor

Robert Scheer


<snip>

They {Blackwater} are "private" in the same fictional sense that our uniformed military is a "volunteer" force, since both are lured by the dollars offered by the same paymaster, the US government. Contractors earn substantially more, despite $20,000 to $150,000 signing bonuses and an all-time-high average annual cost of $100,000 per person for the uniformed military. All of this was designed by the neocon hawks in the Pentagon to pursue their dreams of empire while avoiding a conscripted army, which would have millions howling in the street by now in protest.

Instead, we have checkbook imperialism. The US government purchases whatever army it needs, which has led to the dependence upon private contract firms like Blackwater USA, with its $300-million-plus contract to protect US State Department personnel in Iraq. That is why the latest Blackwater incident, which Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki branded a "crime," is so difficult to deal with. Iraqis are clearly demanding to rid their country of Blackwater and other contractors, and on Tuesday the Iraqi government said it would be scrutinizing the status of all private security firms working in the country.

But the White House hopes the outrage will once again blow over. As the Associated Press reported on Monday: "The US clearly hoped the Iraqis would be satisfied with an investigation, a finding of responsibility and compensation to the victim's families--and not insist on expelling a company that the Americans cannot operate here without." Or, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified to the US Senate last week: "There is simply no way at all that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts."

Consider the irony of that last statement--that the US experiment in building democracy in Iraq is dependent upon the same garrisons of foreign mercenaries that drove the founders of our own country to launch the American Revolution. As George Washington warned in his farewell address, once the American government enters into these "foreign entanglements," we lose the Republic, because public accountability is sacrificed to the necessities of war for empire.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071001/truthdig

[izzie]

1. We have always gone into countries and used them.

Even before 1620 we were in to that business. Our problem seems to be facing it. Can be the Mayflower people having to pay off their loan to some corp. in London or wanting cheap oil from Iraq, in a way it is all the same. Getting some thing from some one else with out paying a fair amount for it. Private armies are just another way to do it. Or maybe it is a re-newed way of doing it. That I just do not know. Life and greed seem to be a big item when you have power.

[cui bono]

2. And this time we're writing hot checks. eom