Outsourcing Fear

Robert Young Pelton is the author of "Licensed to
Kill: Hired Guns in the War
on Terror " and the "Guide to the World's Most
Dangerous Places." He is also co-founder of
http://www.iraqslogger.com . This blog item is about his
experiences attending the Congressional hearing into the Blackwater
shootings in Iraq written on October 2nd, 2007.

The two extremes represent the bookends of public debate on the
private security industry. The former military men who run Blackwater
view their supporting role in the war on terror as both necessary and
good, while human rights activists believe there is something deeply
wrong with authorizing private citizens to kill other private
citizens.

One of the women waiting in line asked me, "How can we find out what
these people are doing?"  I suggested she could go to any
neighborhood in Baghdad and just ask the locals.

Or better yet--spend a week driving through Baghdad in an unmarked car
to see how often convoys blast through intersections, guns bristling
from every door, pointed directly at you, giving you mere seconds to
get out of the way before the bullets start flying. Feel your own
pulse racing as you realize how easily you could have been killed if
you'd had your radio a little louder, or hadn't noticed their
approach, or hadn't swerved to a stop fast enough.

Companies like Blackwater wield a life-and-death power in Iraq,
creating an arrogant misuse of force the United States has put into
civilians hands.

I spent time in Sadr City and other areas interviewing the victims of
Blackwater and other security companies. Terrified Iraqis, many who
did not want to be identified or publicly quoted, told of sudden
unexpected encounters with fast moving convoys of SUVs--then death,
destruction, or permanent life change as family members were crushed,
maimed, killed, or traumatized.

During the time I spent researching my book Licensed to Kill, I
realized there were thousands of stories waiting to be heard about
excessive force being used on civilians in the name of "security".
Not surprisingly, many victims look to a militia to seek some revenge
for the transgression in the form of an ambush or IED.

Security companies are reviled; the Iraqis that work for these
companies have to cover their faces because they know militias or
their neighbors will kill them and or their families.

Military commanders understand that a non-state actor on the
battlefield is a wild card--whether death squad, militia or security
company. Iraqis know that the undermanned military must rely on
contractors to deliver 16 flavors of ice cream, frozen lobster and
bullets to the war effort.

The normally timid State Dept, known more for issuing warnings and
shutting down embassies when things get rough, has decided that its
people must travel the mean streets of Baghdad rather than give in to
intimidation. Security contractors are literally the grease that makes
our forward-leaning foreign policy in Iraq work.

So when Prince pretends like he is defending the US--justifying
violent acts by categorizing it as fighting bad guys--he does it with
the support of the State Department, though to the direct detriment of
the Iraqi civilians those actions terrify and kill.

When Prince testified that his people "acted appropriately at all
times," it made me wonder how many killings he investigated from
the Iraqi viewpoint. He has a blind spot towards the damage he causes
if he thinks that firing a contractor who just murdered someone
somehow fixes the problem. "Window or Aisle" instead of "guilty
or not guilty" does not enforce any accountability

• 23 Private Security
• 116 Human Rights
• 187 Privatization
• 210 Blackwater USA