Posted on 08/20/2018 6:40:22 AM PDT by SleeperCatcher
The founder of the Blackwater private security firm and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is pitching a risky plan to “privatize” the war in Afghanistan, and officials are increasingly worried that POTUS Donald Trump will embrace the plan.
After 17-odd years, and following surges and withdrawals — and surges and withdrawals — of U.S. troops through the years, Blackwater founder Erik Prince says the president is “frustrated” by the lack of progress to date, even as he’s given the Pentagon what it has requested to ‘win’ the war there.
As such, he has been shopping a new operation to use some 5,500 contractors who would replace U.S. troops and embed within Afghan security and military forces in their ongoing battle to stabilize the failed state.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenationalsentinel.com ...
This idea is awful. Companies with a profit motive in charge of ending war? This is an outgrowth of using private contractors instead of regular military. Could that be a factor in never-ending war-mongering? I suspect so.
This seems to be similar to historic models:
(1) England’s control of India prior to the Emporess/Viceroy model was done by (private) East India Company
(2) Control of the Canadian hinterlands was privatized to the Hudson Bay Company agents.
What about the strategic mineral deposits found in Afghanistan? Could a private corporation commercialize it while providing “civilization” there?
The never-ending war-mongering is from not having clear objectives, not recognizing the true enemy, and crushing it.
We crushed Nazism and Japanese militarism as ideologies. We refuse to face the issue of ideology today.
Where can I buy stock in the Northwest India Company?
REFERENCE----War Architect Richard Perle Looking To Enter Oil Business In Iraq
by SATYAM KHANNA / JUL 29, 2008, 2:00 PM
In March 2003, weeks after the invasion of Iraq, war architect Richard Perle resigned from his position on the Defense Policy Board in an attempt to “defuse a controversy over charges he stood to profit from the war in Iraq.” But that hasn’t stopped Perle from continuing to seek profit from the war. Citing documents and people close to the negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reports today that Perle “has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan. One of the oil tracts, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, “is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil, would potentially be operated by Houston-based Endeavour International”:
Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents. […]
Mr. Perle has attended events promoting the interests of Kazakhstan, an oil-rich nation whose ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is involved in a long-running U.S. investigation of 1990s-era oil-company bribery. Mr. Perle has publicly lauded President Nazarbayev as “visionary and wise,” according to a publication distributed by the Kazakh embassy in Washington.
Perle also “has explored obtaining an oil concession in Kazakhstan in tandem with a northern Iraq deal,” the Journal adds. Perle denied the reports, stating, “I am not involved in any consortium…nor am I ‘framing plans for a consortium.’” But a spokesman for Qubat Talabani, the Kurdish government’s delegate in the U.S. who deals with “investment information,” “confirmed that the envoy had been approached by Mr. Perle.”
Perle’s shady business dealings related to the war are long-standing. The New Yorker’s Sy Hersh reported in 2003 on Perle’s role as a managing partner on the defense firm Trireme Partners LLP, whose “business potential depended on a war in Iraq taking place.”
In response, Perle said Hersh was a “terrorist.”
The New York Times revealed recently that the Bush administration “played an integral part” in negotiating no-bid contracts for Western oil companies in Iraq. Despite its devastating security, human, and financial costs on the United States, the Iraq war continues to pay off for the architectsand their friends.
SOURCE https://thinkprogress.org/war-architect-richard-perle-looking-to-enter-oil-business-in-iraq-b6e859a029ca/
How is it “privatized” if I’m still paying for it
Get the heck out of Afghanistan.
No one has ever tamed it, though many have tried.
Blackwater accused of defrauding US government
Private security firm accused of charging US government for payments to prostitute
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
First published on Thu 11 Feb 2010
The troubled American private security company Blackwater faced fresh controversy today when two former employees accused it of defrauding the US government for years, including billing for a Filipina prostitute on its payroll in Afghanistan.
According to Melan Davis, a former employee, Blackwater listed the woman for payment under the “morale welfare recreation” category.
The company, which allegedly employed her in Kabul, billed the government for her plane tickets and monthly salary, Davis said.
Blackwater, renamed Xe last year apparently because of the bad publicity attached to its original name, is among the biggest private security firms employed by the state department and Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The most notorious incident involving Blackwater was the shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007. Charges against Blackwater employees in the US over the incident were dropped last year, prompting the Iraqi government to order hundreds of its security staff out of the country within the next few days.
The latest accusations are contained in court records that have been recently unsealed and reveal details of a lawsuit by Davis and her husband, Brad, who both worked for Blackwater. According to Associated Press, the records say they had personal knowledge of the company falsifying invoices, double-billing federal agencies and charging the government for personal and inappropriate items whose real purpose was hidden.
They said they witnessed “systematic” fraud on the company’s security contracts with the state department in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the department of homeland security and federal emergency management agency in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
There was no immediate response today from the company headquarters in North Carolina.
Melan Davis, who was fired from the company, is challenging the legality of her dismissal, claiming it was because she questioned the billing. Her husband voluntarily resigned from the company.
According to the lawsuit, Melan Davis raised concerns about the company’s bookkeeping with her bosses in March 2006. The lawsuit claims she was told to “back off,” and that she “would never win a medal for saving the government money”.
The Davis couple launched the lawsuit in December 2008, one of a number against Blackwater.Brad Davis, a former Marine, served as a team leader and security guard, including in Iraq. He resigned from the company.
The Washington Post said the couple had made their allegations that Blackwater defrauded the government as part of a false claims lawsuit, which allows whistleblowers to win a portion of any public money that the government recovers as a result of the information.
The justice department has chosen not to join them in pursuing their civil suit, a decision that led to the court papers being unsealed this week.
The Post said that Melan Davis travelled to Amman, Jordan, where she and two co-workers spent hours generating reams of false invoices for plane travel at inflated rates.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/11/blackwater-employees-us-fraud-accusations
Because mercenaries are such a valued group of people in the United States.
Oddly I remember learning about the Hessians when I was a kid in 1950’s America and we weren’t taught that they were good guys.
Maybe Prince needs to rent himself out to the Mafia, they’re fond of contract killers.
How about just saying goodbye and good luck. It is clear that a majority of the Afghan population are welded to their Muslim centered culture. They wish to live that way. The US cannot change their perspective by force of arms, nor should it try. No further presence is justified unless there is a real and imminent threat to harm the American people. Globalist fantasies should not be the basis for deploying the American military. Its up to the Afghan people to work out their own social consensus. Americans are achieving nothing with their sacrifice of blood and treasure. This entanglement is simply creating needless bitter enemies and inconsolable grief for the families of the American dead wounded and those that have been psychologically maimed.
Agree 100%
The Rooskies and the Brits before them.
Much as I like Erik Prince, this is a bad idea.
We should have found a smart sociopath, explained to him what was going to happen to him and his family if he effs up, and put him in charge of Trashcanistan.
Let him and his supporters do the genocide of troublesome tribes.
Seems to me that we are in a circular problem.
Maybe we need a non-partisan, external review of the why, the what and the how regarding AFG.
Answer these questions:
Why are we there (still)? Is it a national security concern or just “because that is what we have been doing for 17 years”? Is the reason we are there still valid?
What happens if we withdraw militarily and leave AFG to the Afghanis but retain influence via non military means? Will the military vacuum be filled with internal people/groups or will other foreign powers ( China, RUS etc) step in to gain influence? If so, so what?
What is the cost/benefit ( people, money, economic, influence, security) 5, 10, 20, 50 years out to or for the US if we exercise any of the options at hand?
Are there other ways and means to effect the ends that we accept as necessary ( and are those ends truly necessary)?
One thing I learned, in my tenure in the Army and in follow on associated “work”, is that you cannot change peoples minds/behaviors by force unless you kill them. They will retreat into the darkness only to reappear when you are not looking and where you are not looking. You may not be able to change their minds/behaviors even with love and friendship- espc. if they live to hate and kill you and yours based on a political or religious ideology. containment may be the best COA in the end. Kill any who appear outside the perimeter.
IRQ is a perfect example. We changed the situation in the 2003-2004 period, effected democratic principles and saw political change begin to reshape the fabric- then, as if by magic ( well, political malfeasance) ISIS pops up when we have removed the specter of military retaliation/force (thanks, Mr. Obama and Sec Clinton/Kerry).
We hung around EUR and JAP for 70 years, but 8 years was enough for IRQ? There’s your crime. Iran and the USSR are the same in both situations.
Gold Star post of the day.
The war is impossible to win. The Taliban for the most part are indigenous Afghanis. If you kill 500 of them they just recruit 500 more. The Afghan army is basically fighting their own countrymen. Everybody is somebody’s cousin over there. then there is the ongoing problem of Pakistan aiding and abetting the Taliban. The Afghan army have little will to fight unless our special forces are right on the scene directing them.
Tactically embedding our contractors with the Afghan army is a good idea just not one we should embrace.
You are right. We (The U.S.) needs to learn the lessons of history and get out of Afghanistan.
Should have been turned into glass or neutron bombed a long time ago.
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