Iraq spokesman: Ex-Blackwater employees not wanted in Iraq

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/...ter/index.html

"...Iraq said Friday it will file suit against five Blackwater security guards cleared of manslaughter charges in the 2007 killings of 17 Iraqi civilians, an act a government official called murder. Al-Dabbagh also said Friday the Iraqi government will ask the U.S. Justice Department to appeal a federal judge's dismissal of the charges Thursday, calling it "unfair and unacceptable.""

Doesn't look like the mess called the Iraq war is going to leave the radar any time soon.

Good post OTH.

Unfortunately, there is much more to Blackwater and Haliburton that the article does not get into, like Money, Power, Corruption and Control on a massive scale. They leave an ugly trail in their wake of destroyed lives.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...0_floyd14.html

Even this link only begins to break the surface.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

They're EEEEEEEVIL!!!!!!

I always wonder about the mental state of people who defend them.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Torvald Von Mansee

I always wonder about the mental state of people who defend them.

What, exactly, were you wondering about it? As a person who defends "them" to some degree I'll be happy to field any questions you may have, though I must say that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of others who defend "them".

In turn, I'd like to ask you about what makes Blackwater or Halliburton evil. Is it that they execute and support war for profit, respectively? I don't find that to be particularly evil. War is a market and there will be people looking to make a living where there is one to be had - even in war.

Perhaps you find the idea of war as a market immoral? I don't. War is immoral, to be sure, but so are genocide and totalitarianism. Which is more immoral; to leave the Iraqi people, particularly the Kurds, and the rest of the middle east subject to the whims of a madman, or to make war in an effort to stop it?

In the case of the Iraq war, if the former aforementioned circumstance is the more immoral, is it then immoral to fight for money and other, non-pecuniary compensation? I hope not, because if it is it means that we have a very immoral military, and that the world is full of very immoral states the people who support them by extension. After all, if our paid professional militaries are acting immorally, is it not then our moral obligation to stop them? And do not kid yourself - the military is full of people who joined for the compensation. Have you forgotten the legions of troops who were enticed to join the service with promises of money for college and lifetime benefits and whatnot, to say nothing of the state disguising the true nature of militaries and warfare with concepts of honor and duty and so on and so forth. How is that moral? If one joins the military for such reasons and is then asked to fight, is it more moral to obey one's oaths and serve (for compensation) or to desert and abandon them? If it is more immoral to fight, than does that not also mean that it is also immoral to respect and provide benefits for those who served? Why honor a mercenary? Is a soldier who serves with a moral purpose somehow less immoral than the state he has pledged obediance to if it prosecutes an unjust war?

As you can see, there are a lot of grey areas here, but they can be made rather black-and-white by going to the source of what we call evil. What is evil, exactly? There are endless numbers of greater evils and lesser evils and necessary evils, but what constitutes evil itself, in the human context? I will tell you that it is the use of force, deceipt, or coercion to infringe upon the sovereignty of others. That is what makes war evil. That is what makes genocide evil. That is what makes tyranny evil.

That is also what makes states a necessary evil. States use force to create societies. People need societies to advance and to secure their rights. They must have a system of laws and enforcement of those laws to work and trade in order to grow prosperous and innovate and protect their sopveregnty. The state is the generally accepted agency to effect this, and the main reason is that pretty much everyone agrees with the above. Thus, they more or less mutually consent to form a governing body.

To do that is moral. It creates greater order and enforces human rights. But it is only moral so long as the nature of the state is moral. Immoral states have plagued humanity since the dawn of time. Try to count the number of states that have oppressed, tortured, killed, or otherwise oppressed both their own people and others. Try to quantify the amount of suffering they have caused. I'll wait.

In case you are wondering, the reason they do that is because states are concentrations of power. Concentrations of power naturally attract people who desire power, obviously. People who desire power (like force) are inherently evil. They may not necessarily be immoral, but generally, they are. They seek to impose their own agendas upon others, through whatever means, and the state provides a convenient conduit. Just look at the people who comprise the states of the world today. Virtually all of them are ambitious seekers of power with their own views of how the world should be. It is not coincidental that they envision themselves as the executors of their own visions. It is rare to see a person of power who has a consistent record of acting in the interests of the people, or who leaves power to the people.

This is what made Jefferson and his ilk so remarkable. People like him envisioned a moral state. A state that had no power over its subjects other than some restricted and necessary powers and restriction thereof that it imposed upon itself. Of course, Jefferson himself was immoral - he owned slaves, how he treated them was no object, and the work he did to create the US state was also subject to immorality, to some extent.

Nonetheless, the state that Jefferson and other founding fathers created was superior. It was a constitutional republic the like of which the world had never seen, and the moral governance and freedoms that it created made the United States of America into a world power in an unprecedently short time for a nation so new and vast.

Nonetheless, the state Jefferson created was a concentration of power, and as he put it himself, it was subject to "the natural progress of things", and so it was. It didn't even take 3 decades for people to try to assert control through, rather than over, the federal government. Andrew Jackson, a now much-maligned president, destroyed the first instance of the federal bank. The Federal Reserve Bank resurfaced in the first years of the 1900's, and it has been around ever since, despite the fact that the government has absolutely no power to create or endorse such a thing beyond the power to "coin" money. That was due to the concentrated efforts of men, over the course of decades, to secure their own interests.
Again, as Jefferson said, it was "the natural progress of things". And why wouldn't it be?

Forgive me for this aside, but I'll briefly relate an experience that may help illustrate this concept in more detail. In some of the jobs I have held throughout my adult life I have been a member of several "safety" groups. As you may have surmised, the purpose of such councils or committees or teams or whatever name they bear is to create and enforce safety regulations. Safety is, after all, a very important concern for most firms. Tort laws pose a serious threat to profitability, so some of the wiser companies I have worked for arrived at the conclusion that getting an employee-based perspective on safety regulations would be a good idea. In every safety-group I participated in I noticed one common tendency; the tendency to over-regulate. That mystified me for a bit, but I eventually deduced the real cause for it. If one creates a group that is focussed solely on safety (or any other) regulations the group will embrace the natural human desire to excel at its task and (not coincidentally) justify its own existence. This tendency is doubly true in federal agencies, where budgets are awarded based upon what rhetoric a spokesperson can deliver to an uninformed bunch of disinterested but politcally-minded and charismatic fools who cater to public opinion rather than performance, and how much of others' money has been spent and what results it has achieved. Such is the nature of our society, which promotes specialization.

Jump ahead to the modern age and the level to which the US state has been co-opted by private interests is readily apparent. We all bitch and moan about lobbyists and the amount of money and lives that are spent furthering the agendas of lawyer-politicians and lobbies is very, very apparent to all of us. Nonetheless, we still often entrust powers to the federal state, despite the constitutional limitations on state power. Yet again, this is the natural progression of things. It is easy to say that this or that should be fixed by someone. It is much harder to deduce a truly effective and sustainable means to do so. The state is certainly not the answer.

Now, let us get back to Blackwater and Halliburton. Are they moral or immoral? Good or evil? The truth is that, relative to the state, they are both good and moral. For one thing, they do not lie about their intentions when it comes to the people they hold power over. They are quite straightforward about the fact that they are willing to pay their employees well for performing services related to war sanctioned by the US state. They do not have a conflict of interests, but rather an honest interest in conflicts, unlike so many states.

They serve the interests of the US govenrment for pay, no different from what any soldier does. They pay their employees well, and only recruit those who express both a willingness and a qualification to serve. Do I need to describe how expenentionally more moral that is than the conduct of the US military and government? They provide superior troops and services, making the conflict both shorter and more comfortable for the troops. They do that by paying more. Is that somehow immoral when one considers the Iraq situation? All they are doing is to provide effective services to the US military and creating jobs. And companies literally exist to create jobs. Charity is nice, but jobs are nicer. As the saying goes; give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Which is more moral - charity or profitability? Personally, I prefer to engage in charitable contributions of my choice where possible. I am no business magnate, and I have no ambition to create a company that will in turn create livleyhoods for people, so charity is my best option for satisfying the moral need to help other causes that I can identify with. Where I cannot give money I devote my time, and I am free to do that because the free market makes it so. Even now, without a permanent job, in the midst of a terrible recession, I still enjoy a standard of living that is not available to the vast majority of the people on this planet. My employer has made it so, and it only did so because it needs determined and skilled employees and it must pay for them. These are all selfish motives, but is the end result moral, or immoral?

If you are really looking for evil or immorality, Torvald, I would suggest that you start with the very nature of the states that create such conflicts. If states were not controlled by self-interested *******s there would be little reason for war and therefore no need for mercenaries or war-contractors or a war-industrial complex. Trade would be the maxim, and trade does not treat conflict lightly, because it is disrupted by it, except where the state creates a market in war.

With all this talk of trade and morality and governance you may be wondering where I place my own opinion, in case you have not guessed it from my previous submissions. My support lies with the Jeffersonian ideals of self-determination and non-interventionism. As a people, we and our government can only be charged with our own well-being. We must not engage in foreign wars or entangling allances. We must practice free trade with all nations and acceptance of all peoples, but we must never let anyone co-opt the federal state. Our own virtues will see us prevail as a nation. If others seek to co-opt us or destroy us from within, let them come and compete using their own virtues. We will either destroy them or assimilate them, something that will happen purely via free will, and in doing so we will create the best society.

We must use our state for the means it was intended. It must provide a level field, but it must not try to balance the teams. It must not provide a conduit that can be used to bypass the level field. The US state is a good state in theory, but over two centuries of exposure to the natural progression of things has seen its decline. What we need now is a new constitution. One written with the lessons of history in mind, and that is even more restrictive of federal powers, and more clearly defined.

The state is a concentration of power. It is a necessary evil, and so it must be subjugated and brought to heel. It must be made to encourage domestic meritocracy where possible, and rendered impotent otherwise. In making it so we will find ourselves in a new era, one in which nations lead by example, rather than force. If nations choose to make their peoples suffer by enforcing a centralistic agenda it will be no concern of ours. They will either come around or ruin themselves, but their conduct is not within our jurisdiction so long as it does not affect us. In the meantime the prosperity we will reap from being free of war and government power will allow us to aid those who suffer as much as possible until they reform themselves.

Does Haliburton and others, such as The Carlysle Group, serve the state, or do the stateS now serve them?

[AVGWarhawk]

Blackwater does not exist under that name anymore. However they do still exist. Personally, if they did wrong then they did wrong and should go to trial.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

What, exactly, were you wondering about it? As a person who defends "them" to some degree I'll be happy to field any questions you may have, though I must say that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of others who defend "them".

In turn, I'd like to ask you about what makes Blackwater or Halliburton evil. Is it that they execute and support war for profit, respectively? I don't find that to be particularly evil. War is a market and there will be people looking to make a living where there is one to be had - even in war.

Perhaps you find the idea of war as a market immoral? I.....

Brilliant

[Skybird]

In europe's history we have had mecenary armies existing independant from government/feudal rulership. That europe has moved beyond this and established regular standing armies "wearing the king's colours", is not for no reason, but has been a great acchievement in the quest for peace, how fragile it may be.

War should not risked to become object of market and economic enterprise again. It will bring oyu more war. It should be kept under national government'S control whether or not a naton declares war or not - not a board of profit-hungry entrepreneurs. That is also the reason why the close alliance between the arms industry and politics (the often mentioned militar-industrial complex) is such a huge threat not only to hostile nations, but to the hosting demiocracy itself. Eisenhower has not warned of it for no reason, and he surely cannot be accused of not knowing what he was talking of. As general and then as president he learned to know both sides of this unholy alliance all too well. that'S why he warnd of it.

The Italians called mercenaries "condottiere", and a famous mercenary leader was the Englishman John Hawkwood. Of him , this story exists, and it illustrates perfectly why we should not want private mercenary companies.

In novella 181 of his Trecentonovelle, the fourteenth-century storyteller Franco Sacchetti has John Hawkwood encounter two Franciscan monks near his fortress at Montecchio. The monks greet the Englishman.

‘‘Monsignore, God grant you peace,’’ said the monks.

‘‘And may God take away your alms,’’ Hawkwood responded immediately.

‘‘Lord, why do you speak to us this way?’’ asked the frightened monks.

‘‘Indeed, because you spoke thus to me,’’ replied John.

‘‘We thought we spoke well,’’ said the monks.

‘‘How can you think you spoke well,’’ said Hawkwood, ‘‘when you approach me and say that God should let me die of hunger? Don’t you know that I live from war and peace would destroy me? And as I live by war, you live by alms. So that the answer I gave you is the same as your greeting.’’

Considering the many brutal wars in europe and the role mercenary armies plaxed in them, namely the 30-years war, there is no excuse to want to go back to the institution of mercenary armies.

Recommended reading: Herfried Münkler's superb "The new wars".

http://www.amazon.com/New-Wars-Herfr...2630485&sr=8-2



P.S. I see that an even better book bei Münkler finally has been translated and published in English. A very good, an outstanding book: Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States

http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Domina...2630556&sr=8-1

Over the past years I have repeatedly referred to the German edition of this book. Amazon.com gives it only 5 star reviews by readers, and quotes editorials hailing it's outstanding excellence. And me: I say you won't find a better book on empires so easily that nevertheless get the difference between empire and imperialism. A most excellent study.
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