Mercenaries, Hidden Crimes, and Moral Debts

Readers of this blog would hardly take it as a surprise that I am anything but a fan of "Blackwater" in specific and similar "private contractor" companies being employed by the US. And if recent news is any indicator, I am perfectly justified in this sentiment.

Recent news has hit my radar with the information that Iraq has pulled the contractor's license of Blackwater; and intentds to press charges against both Blackwater's employees whom were involved in a recent debacle, and the company itself. Even Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has gotten involved. Via Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq announced on Monday it had withdrawn the license of a U.S. security firm and would prosecute employees it said were involved in a shooting in Baghdad in which 11 people were killed.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said security personnel working for contractors Blackwater had opened fire after mortar rounds landed near their cars in Nusour Square in the western Baghdad district of Mansour.

"By chance the company was passing by. They opened fire randomly at citizens," Brigadier-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said. Eleven people were killed, including one policeman, and 13 people were wounded, he said.

A U.S. embassy spokesman said the shooting took place after a car bomb exploded when U.S. diplomats were nearby.

[...]

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki condemned the shooting and vowed to punish the perpetrators and their employers.

"We will work to punish and halt the work of the security company which conducted this criminal act," state television quoted him as saying.

The U.S. embassy said it was seeking clarification on whether Blackwater employees could be prosecuted in Iraq.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said security contractors "must respect Iraqi laws and the right of Iraqis to independence on their land."

"These cases have happened more than once and we can't keep silent in the face of them," he told Arabiya television.

There's a pricelessly dangerous gem embedded in here: "The U.S. embassy said it was seeking clarification on whether blackwater employees could be prosecuted in Iraq." -- Are these bastards even trying to pretend that Iraq is to be treated as a sovereign nation anymore? If someone went around killing American citizens -- violent or not -- on American soil, you can damn well bet that the U.S. government would stop at nothing to get those 'perps' tried in an American court. (Well, okay; in a tinfoil-hat moment, maybe they wouldn't. But only because they opted for something worse still, and still in control of the "FedGov".)

But this piece of information draws to light a very disturbing trend that has somehow slipped underneath the radar of the public at large: the US forces are increasingly reliant upon the use of 'private' government contractors in lieu of military force. Back in December the 5th, 2006, the Washington Post had an article which stated that there were roughly 100,000 government contractors -- not counting subcontractors -- operating in Iraq. In contrast, the US Government admitted to there being roughly 25,000 private contractor personnel -- and even then, the casualties of contractors is not included in the "official" statistics.

The report from Baghdad about the suspension of Blackwater's licence, then, must come in light of this fact; who is providing oversight for these organizations? Disturbingly, many of the Abu Ghraib interrogators were private contractors -- working for a company that wasn't included in the list of 60 companies it acknowledged were operating in Iraq.

And, of course, with the spike in US Casualties deriving from the "surge", once again that same pattern -- of failing to acknowledge the casualties within the civilian contractor personnel, is carried on. As spoken at the liberal-biased website, "Greenleft.org":

In April, 104 US soldiers were killed in Iraq, an average rate of 3.47 killed per day. In the first 23 days of May, 80 US soldiers have died — an average rate of 3.48.

But even these figures do not indicate the true US casualty rate. The May 19 New York Times reported that data it had obtained from the US Labor Department revealed that “casualties among [US] private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year”.

While 244 US military personnel were killed in Iraq during the first three months of this year, figures obtained by the NYT revealed 146 US employees of private military contractors were killed — “by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq”.

At least 917 US contractors have been killed in Iraq, the paper reported, “along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews”.

[...]

But in the first three months of this year, private military contractor fatalities have accounted for one-third of total US war deaths — though these are not included in Pentagon statistics.

For the record, the official US Casualties -- that's wounded & dead put together -- associated with Iraq are in the ballpark of 27,000 soldiers. Adding in the 'civilian' contractors would put that number at roughly 40,000 casualties. And that with less than 300,000 personnel in Iraq, and going on 5 years of operations. In Vietnam, by contrast, there were 8.7 million acknowledged personnel, and a casualty tally of 213,460 -- for the entire period of some twenty years. Our current death rate may be much, much lower -- but when we factor in the actual casualty rate of all US-employed personnel, the reality is much grimmer. If our numbers and duration were to equal Vietnam's, the comparitive casualties would be astronomically greater in Iraq.

There is a claim that I, as an individual, have heard made from those who "support the military" (How I don't qualify as a supporter of the troops by wanting to keep them alive and able to defend us with all their strength at 100% is quite literally beyond me) that the death toll is comparable to the motor-vehicle death toll for America. By way of comparison, the death rate for motor-vehicle incidents in America, for all ages, is 16.5 per 100,000. By comparison, the death-rate for US Soldiers in Iraq is greater than 1,000 per 100,000. And, as this blog has argued in the past -- of those few in Iraq whom actually target US personnel, their goal is clearly not to induce death. If it were, there would be a higher death-to-casualty ratio than the 5-10% of all casualties resulting in death as they do now.

Up until now, I'm sure, this entire post has read as though it were a bit rambling. And with this final point, I will drive home that it in likely, in fact, is not. Consider, then, the following: what is the actual mission of our boys and girls over in the Big Sandbox, how many troops would it take to get the job done; and why aren't they there? Could it possibly be because there is no job to be done? Certainly, we can continue to bear the current death-rate of US soldiers in terms of our population -- but how much longer can we bear the moral stain on the 'fabric' of our nation's 'soul'? Hidden in the 'conservative' argument comparing soldier deaths to motor-vehicle deaths is this: the one is an 'accident'. The other, we are all responsible for as a people.