Blackwater - uncharted and bloody waters

In September 2007, Blackwater contractors were providing security for a convoy of state department officials, when they opened up fire and killed at least 14 Iraqis at an intersection - some shot in the back as they were trying to flee. Even US soldiers testified that Blackwater started the shooting. Four Blackwater employees were indicted for manslaughter, but a couple of weeks ago, all the charges were dismissed because the prosecutors used incriminating confessions that they had agreed not to use. It wasn't clear they could have convicted the shooters anyway given the legal vacuum that they operate within.

In a chilling interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Jeremy Scahill, author of "Blackwater" said that the Blackwater Chief, Erik Prince, sees himself as a "Christian Crusader" avenging the terrorism of 9/11. His band of veteran, mercenary soldiers - established less than 15 years ago - work outside the laws that our own soldiers must obey, with their own weapons, helicopters, and planes. Much of their work is kept secret - even from Congress - because the CIA and JSOC (special operations) don't have to report their contracts. The state department - which does report to Congress - paid the company more than $832million for security work between 2004 and 2006 alone.

From 2005 until the September 2007 shootout, Blackwater staff were involved in 195 shootings in Iraq, according to records gathered by Congressman Henry Waxman, and Blackwater employees fired first on 163 of those occasions.

Both Obama and Clinton - as candidates - said that we must stop depending on unregulated military contractors, but yet we still depend heavily on Blackwater in Afghanistan. As Congressman Waxman wondered in the hearings he convenened, how is it that we pay a group of mercenaries when we have an army, navy, CIA, etc. etc.? I am amazed that our laws allow for a Blackwater at all - with its own military planes, weaponry, training grounds, and soldiers. The company sounds like a right-wing militia group that is wildly successful because they target Muslims instead of the U.S. government.

There are many more shocking facts in the interview, this BBC article, and the Wikipedia entry.

"The Wars of John McCain"

Jeffrey Goldberg's article in the October, Atlantic Magazine - "The Wars of John McCain" – illuminates John McCain as a military hero first and last. Forget the economy, forget education and health care. When it comes to McCain's passion and deep rooted political will, it's all about war strategy and preserving the country's honor and that of its soldiers. Both McCain's father and grandfather were US Navy Admirals. Candidate McCain wrote a book on the two of them and noted that Kissinger would bring his father to see Nixon periodically because his father was consistently certain that our troops were close to victory. Candidate John McCain III was critical early on of the Bush administration and Rumsfeld in particular for not deploying more troops to Iraq when the occupation became so strained and deadly. The "surge" has been McCain's redemption and his constant refrain - even though there are those who argue that the surge is a small part of the decrease in killings.

Years ago, the psychologist, Erik Erikson wrote psycho-biographies of Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi, describing each one's dynamics with his father and how those dynamics revealed themselves in their history-shaping lives. Would it be so much of a stretch to see both the military decisions of George Bush and John McCain III to be colored by their respective father-son "schtuff?" George Bush I was roundly criticized in conservative circles for not finishing off Hussein in Gulf War I, and Admiral McCain II was the loser in a war
he had every confidence of winning with his troops. George II and John III may well be engaged in battles that their fathers left for them to finish.

Add to that, the general sentiment of McCain and his fellow, courageous POW's that US soldiers do not cut and run. It's understandable that they would have a much larger investment in that perspective - as opposed to many soldiers in the field who bore witness - or more - to the horrors wreaked on Vietnamese villages.

Once a military campaign is underway, you don't imagine a McCain indulging in thoughts about whether the war is justified or moral. They are military leaders bound to honor, duty, and victory as that culture demands of its chiefs.

Speaking of McCain's flip flops on a variety of domestic issues, Goldberg writes "....tax policy, or health care, or even off-shore oil drilling are for him all matters of mere politics, and politics calls for ideological plasticity. It is only in the realm of national defense, and of American honor – two notions that for McCain are throroughly entwined – that he becomes truly unbending."

"Stop-Loss" bonus dollars

Emiliano Santiago



Last week, a house subcommittee voted to grant a retroactive $500 per month bonus for all the extra months of harrowing duty in Iraq and Afghanistan that our "stop-loss" soldiers are forced to endure. Stop-loss soldiers are those who completed their contractual tours of duty only to be told they aren't done yet.

After I saw the very moving film, "Stop Loss", I did some "googling" and found the court case of a soldier who thought it unfair that his service contract could be extended against his will. Before the Civil War, we had another name for that kind of contract. In 2004, two weeks before completing his 8 year contract with the National Guard, Emiliano Santiago was told he must deploy to Afghanistan. He fought the order all the way to the Supreme Court, but lost at every level. The small print on his contract - since stop loss was invented in 1990 - says that the President can order troops to stay beyond their discharge date if a war or a state of emergency exists. Santiago was shipped out to Afghanistan in June, 2005. I was not able to find any update on how he has fared.

Anyone who sees the film, "Stop Loss," will feel the absurdity of valuing a month of unexpected, harrowing "soldier-ing" in Iraq with a $500 bonus. But we're talking about 160,000 soldiers who've had their contracts changed and about 12,000 extra months of war between them. The total price tag comes to about 600 million dollars. I guess it's easier for stockholders of a big corporation to give their CEO a multi-million dollar bonus since they count it against the profits they've reaped. The soldiers just don't bring us citizen-stakeholders any profits.

Here are the articles and blogs I read:
USA Today 1/2004

Seattle Weekly 3/2005

Blog by a Military Family 4/2005

Armed Forces Journal - 5/2008

"Stop-Loss"

Last night we watched the very intense and powerful, Stop Loss, a film about current U.S. soldiers. The movie gives us an acidic, visceral taste of the horrors and nightmarish violence saturating their days in Iraq. It focuses on a unit where many of the boys come from the same Texas town and focuses on their leader and beloved friend who gave his all throughout his "tour of duty" (a very strange juxtaposition of terms). A day after the hometown heroes' parade he is informed of a fine-print policy in his enlistment contract called "stop loss," that mandates he go back and do another stint in Iraq because the president has ordered an extension.

I'd be very surprised if any of the recruiters mushrooming across our country's high school campuses, tout or even mention this rule that allows the president to extend active combat of an enlistee for as long as the war continues. John Kerry called it the "backdoor draft." It can be used even when the U.S. is not officially at war - as it has in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia.

The film depicts numerous, poignant challenges that our soldiers face. For those lucky enough to return alive and in one piece, they are likely to experience some debilitating PTSD experiences, nightmares, hallucinations, and violent outbursts. Some don't want to go back to "normal" lives, working 9 - 5 and fitting into the role of spouse. Others, with their bodies burnt and deformed don't even have that choice. But the central issue is the shock of the "stop-loss" order for the soldiers who want to come home, hoping and expecting to put the nightmares behind them.

While many of us have some familiarity with the stories of soldiers who fled to Canada or Mexico to avoid the draft during the Viet Nam War, we are clueless about the current wave of enlisted soldiers who have followed the same pathways to avoid going back into the hell from which they just emerged....a hell in which the politicians calling the "shots" wouldn't last a week. These soldiers experienced years of screaming bullets, maiming bombs, and horrendous deaths of their friends and their foes - only to find themselves outlaws and fugitives in our country, Canada, or Mexico if they resist the stop-loss orders.

I know it is sketchy to base one's knowledge on a fictional movie. In this case the writer-director Kimberley Peirce had a deep personal involvement as her brother was one of the "surge" of enlistees following 9/11 and she was in daily contact with him (via instant messaging) throughout his time in Iraq. She also spent months doing research with soldiers before putting her story together. As sources go, she's probably no worse a starting point, than the Iraqi politicians that our own senators interview on their investigative trips to the country.