Posted on 01/07/2009 6:02:12 AM PST by Kaslin
Justice: Once again, Americans asked to put their lives on the line go on trial. Their crime was doing the very job we asked them to do in Iraq. Will they now be sacrificed for an ungrateful Iraq?
On Sept. 16, 2007, 18 members of the "Raven 23" team came under fire while responding to an attack on another Blackwater group transporting a State Department official. It was a typical mission under their contract. This freed up military personnel for combat.
To aid their comrades, Raven 23 had to take the most direct route, which took them through Baghdad's Nisour Square on their way to the Green Zone. As radio logs show, they came under fire while trying to set up a temporary roadblock through which their comrades could pass quickly and safely.
They returned fire and when the firefight ceased 14 Iraqis were dead and 20 wounded.
To call this action "voluntary manslaughter in the commission of a crime" is a tragic joke. They were protecting State Department personnel in a war zone, as they were contracted to do. They had no reason or motive to show up in downtown Baghdad and start randomly shooting civilians.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
And that has what to do with private defense contractors?
But it does look like you need a BIG HUG...not from me of course!
I guess it is ok for some military people, like IT or pilots or technicians to use their skills to make a buck but it isn’t ok for some combat arms guys to do the same?
And yes, I heard plenty of gripes from the young privates about how little they made in comparison, but then again, Blackwater et al weren’t hiring entry level operators, but guys who paid their dues and had training and exerience.
And that kind of training and experience doesn’t come cheap!
1. I put it in quotes because the word “contractor” is very new when discussing such companies. They’ve been called “mercenaries” for hundreds of years, but only recently has “contractor” come into use for this purpose.
2. Blackwater does more than protect “US civilian dignitaries” in Iraq. They have other contracts outside the US government, including private companies providing logistics support. They do so ARMED and they use force.
They fight, primarily in a defensive capability, but they fight.
I use the term “mercenary” because that’s what it is.
I understand it’s come to be used a a perjorative, but so have a lot of perfectly cromulent words.
It’s obvious that they’re needed by both government and private agencies, so the term “contractor” was dreamed up to keep the stupid press and their dim-witted accomplices complacent.
When shipping companies hired such men to guard their fleets, they were “mercenaries”, just as now.
I understand it’s used that way, but are we really changing anything by using the word “contractor”?
Hell, even that word is starting to be used in a negative manner.
What word do we come up with next?
Stay with 'em.
How come the State Dept officials they were hired to protect and the State Dept itself isn’t include in this Indictment?? They Did Willfully and Knowingly Conspire with Blackwater. Just like the Getaway Driver is charged with murder if someone gets killed in a robbery even though he didn’t have a gun. They were the Contractor in this obvious Murder for Hire case and they should all Be in Jail if we are going to prosecute these guys for carrying out their orders.
Eyeamok
I think we can draw a distinction between someone designing warplanes at Lockheed-Martin and someone actually on the ground in a warzone, pulling a trigger. The first is a defense contractor. The second may also qualify as a defense contractor, but by every historical standard, they are a mercenary.
A mercenary, taken in a vacuum, is not automatically a bad thing. But, they have different motivations and goals than a regular member of our military.
I have to disagree- mercenaries have been hired, historically, for a variety of roles, both offensive and defensive. For example, the Byzantine emperor had a bodyguard composed of Nordic mercenaries. In fact, hiring mercenaries as bodyguards has been very common, historically, because some rulers felt that foreign bodyguards, with no local political ties, could be trusted to be more loyal than locals (so long as they were paid).
The fact that Blackwater was hired primarily for a defensive role does not change the fact that they are mercenaries by any historical definition of the word.
This made me laugh out loud. I bet only a handful of people will get this reference.
Their company is a for-profit entity which bid on and entered into a CONTRACT to do certain things for the U.S. government.
They actually ASKED to go to Iraq. They are quite different from U.S. military personnel.
You're absolutely right.
And while there are plenty of good, decent PSDs who work for Blackwater, unfortunately there are enough steroid-pumped, chest-thumping Rambo-wannabes among their ranks to have earned Blackwater their bad standing with the Iraqis.
This became a diplomatic mission in conjunction with the war around June of 2003 and Blackwater has been a detriment.
The incident where 14 Iraqis were killed is often mentioned, but there are several incidents which are not. Every time Blackwater pulled one of their shenanigans, anti-American sentiment was stoked and hostile events saw a brief spike, putting every one of us at increased risk.
They have long been a source of scorn and derision among other contractors in Iraq. When their "little birds" are buzzing around with Rambo's legs hanging out of them (oh, snap!), you'll hear military guys making sarcastic remarks like "Oh, good, we're all safe now. Blackwater's out there protecting all of us."
I even saw three guys dressed as Blackwater PSDs at a Halloween party here last fall, replete with bodybuilder.com T-shirts, Blackwater hats and fake muscle bulges under their shirts, swaggering around and hilariously acting the part. They had us all in stitches.
Sorry...meant to ping you to Post 50.
"Mercenaries" have been, by definition, "guns for hire;" soldiers who work for pay without regard for ideology or the moral standing of the cause they serve. The adjective form of the word itself means "serving merely for pay or sordid advantage."
I do not think this describes our soldiers who have gone to work in Iraq for private companies. It may describe a tiny percentage of them, or it might the other foreign nationals employed by PSC's, but I think the term insults the vast majority of private security contractors.
They consider it an insult, as well.
Thank you. It’s good to hear that from someone who has actually dealt with them.
It will be even worse with Ol' Crusty at the helm.
Standing armies are a relatively recent historical phenomina. Before them you had 2 things: the medieval system of lord/vassal military obligation & the pros — who were the mercenaries.
Medieval lord/vassal relationships eventually got so complicated that the king could never be sure who would show up when the call came (blood relationships were increasingly tangled). But as long as the king had the coin, he could always rent a competent military force for the duration.
The reason Blackwater is used by State Department wusses is because the contract soldiers do not have to follow the same sick "rules of engagement" that our military has been burdened with by Bush and the hordes of scumbag lawyers he has placed in charge of the war effort. Hopefully these guys struck a deal to be tried in Utah by real Americans before they voluntarily turned themselves in.
The formal title of the Hessian commander (Rall) killed at Trenton in 1776 was "proprietor-colonel". If that doesn't emphasize the contract nature of mercenary work I don't know what does.
Good post, BTW!
To a large extent, standing armies came about, in many countries, because the king needed to break the back of the nobility. As you mentioned, relying on the nobles to bring their vassals to war was very vulnerable to politics- if a Count or Duke decided he wanted to switch sides and abandon his king, he could take his troops to the other side and cripple the king's ability to fight a war. A standing army, answerable to the king, went a long way towards limiting the power of the nobility.
I didn’t know that.
Excellent info.
I was thinking of the etymology of the military unit title “company”, as it related directly to private “companies” of “contract” soldiers.
Our own military origins are strongly related to the mercenary tradition.
I'm not so sure. I think military 'company' and the commercial 'company' may simply derive from a common root. Alexander the Great had his "Companion Cavalry" that was made-up primarily of his peers within the Macedonian nobility. I think that the military organizational unit probably decends directly from that example.
That said, the modern corporation was born in the late Middle Ages at around the same time as the modern state. Terminology was probably pretty flexibly applied due to that simple fact.
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