AMERICA'S PRIVATE ARMIES
Book review by Ken Setter

America, we are constantly reminded, is the most powerful military force the world has known, the worlds only superpower. True. Yet America is incapable of fighting a war, large or small, without private military corporations such as Blackwater, Vinnell, DynCorp, SAIC, CACI, Titan Group, Ibis Tek, and others.

America has abdicated its state monopoly of the use of force in favour of private business. Recent decades has witnessed a seismic shift from congressional oversight to administration by special interests and lobby groups. Government functions not of, by and for the people but at the behest of corporations, eroding the constitutional system of checks and balances. America’s increasing reliance on private military contractors, coupled with the relentless pursuit of private profit, represents an intimidating and toxic combination, which, if left unchecked, will destroy democracy.

Most people will be surprise to learn that mercenaries, sometimes called soldiers of fortune, and guns for hire, are illegal under international law, re-branded, as private military contractors, they constitute an industry with a turnover of more than a $US100 billion.  Its paramilitaries function above the law, disguised under a multitude of protective euphemisms such as “civilian contractors” or “foreign reconstruction workers” and Military Professional Recourses International (MPRI).

According to Jeremy Scahill author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Arm, theyprovide ‘the US government with a way around declining military recruitment, the political cost of conscription, dead soldiers, a way to short-circuit citizen anti-war opposition, and other potential democratic brakes on the government’s unpopular wars’. However no amount of linguistic surgery can change a mercenary into something other than a mercenary. Yet these sanitized warriors are now so prolific they constitute a fifth branch of Americas armed forces. America fighting a war without a sizable MPRI component is unimaginable. 

Military corporations such as Blackwater, Vinnell, DynCorp, SAIC, CACI, Titan Group, Ibis Tek, and there are many more, are equipped with fleets of aircraft, including helicopter gunships and surveillance blimps. Blackwater has a 7,000 acre headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, and more the $US500 million in government contracts—and that does not include its secret ‘black’ budget operations for U.S. intelligence agencies’, some have cluster bombs in its armory.

Over a dozen of these private military corporations currently operate in Iraq, far out numbering the US army in both numbers and pay, these private armies operate over and above the law; and are accountable to no one, Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, in issuing ‘Order 17’ made private contractors immune from prosecution for what otherwise would be war crimes. What is surprising in a democratic state is that there is a paucity of regulation surrounding the export of private armed military services and weapons.

For generations of soldiers cleaning boots, picking up garbage, doing guard duty, and pealing potatoes was seen as imperative to instilling military discipline, no longer, these tasks are the responsibility of private military corporations. In the service of the Pentagon, private corporations, civilians, not soldiers, operate computers, write software code, create integrating systems, intelligence, interrogators, train technicians, manufacture and service high-tech weapons, market munitions, and interpret satellite images, as well as providing food and laundry services. Many an old soldier will be shocked to know that private guards are hired to provide site security at West Point of all places. And should the real soldiers become injured then private contractors are only too happy to fit prosthetics, fill prescriptions and a private shrink will listen to the sad tales soldiers have to tell of killing women and kids whilst on active service. Top to bottom, the Pentagon's war machine is no longer just driven by soldiers, but staffed by, corporations, and should the service men and women long for a touch of home, not to worry MacDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Burger King, are close at hand.

The proliferation of these private military corporations pose a threat to democracy through an abdication of power to un-elected corporations, in total they bring into being a rise of authoritarian government, in which the role of elected officials changes from serving the common good to serving vested interests. Lobby groups become the new voters, party machinery becomes meaningless, and America changes it starts to worship of military, it allows public officials to retain titles after they leave office. (Shades of imperial England, now stop right there: didn’t America fight a revolution against this sort of thing?) In an emergency private corporations usurp the role of government and police, partly through government abdication of its traditional responsibility and deregulation and the profit motive during Hurricane Katrina, Backwater’s soldiers were paid by the US Government to patrol the streets of New Orleans at the cost to taxpayers of some $US240,000 a day.

America has long since unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to suit its international and domestic interests (read corporate), bereft of moral considerations befitting a Christian nation America permits the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world, it has signed a secret executive order authorizing a policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on earth and transfer them to prisons in countries known to torture. It’s all part of the service folks.

Among the principles protected by the Constitution, in theory at least, few compare with the transparency sought by the First Amendment. The reason is simple: government secrecy impedes democracy. Commercial in confidence provisions bypass open government as the profit motive takes over, more and more corporations submit projects to the pentagon, secret data collection, phone tapping and recording, spy cameras.    Controversial government programs are theoretically restrained by checks and balances, like legislative oversight and judicial review. Neither Congress nor the courts have a way to check a secret program. All outside the pentagon loop are stymied by secrecy. Who is to know what secret stuff goes on behind the closed and guarded doors of the pentagon. It’s a secret. No worries, the government is looking after you, they know what’s best, but each time they contract out some new secret deal there goes another slice of freedom. During the process government transmutes, it is no longer of, by and for the people but operates at the behest of corporations and the politicians, corrupted by a system long since devoid of any resemblance to service to the people. In the words of Robert Lowell, The elect, the elected…they come here bright as dimes, and die disheveled and soft.

September 2001 opened a boom time for defense contractors, as well as the military. Since 9/11, military corporations have made a quantum leap into the big league of Pentagon contracts. So many of these contracts are written in the name of security, as Alice learns, security means anything the ‘red queen’ wants it to mean. However the most comforting security people can have is a job that brings in a decent living wage, a comprehensive health service for all and livable housing in a community free from crime and corruption. Clean air and food free from contamination with a government inspectorate armed with sufficient powers to prosecuted offenders and publicize the offences, for these to be effective a media needs to be free from interference from vested interests. Goodbye Fox News, hello public broadcasting, its time to remind Mr. Murdock that the ‘golden age of freedom’ excludes total private ownership of the media.

The New York Times (12/08/08) cited a report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, indicating that two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.There is no prize for guessing who ends up paying. Meanwhile as poverty grows America is witnessing the growth of tent communities on the fringes of cities, the homeless, a stark reminder of the great depression in a land armed to the teeth to protect its corporations, while discarding the victims. Basic high school economics teaches the ‘Guns and Butter’ theory of economy. You can have either guns or butter but not both. The correctness of the theory is most clearly demonstrated as the American economy teeters on the verge of collapse.
America has allowed itself to become increasing reliant on private military contractors to wage unpopular wars, this coupled with the relentless pursuit of private profit, represents an intimidating and toxic combination, which, if left unchecked, will destroy democracy. It should be a warning to us all, a reminder that when democracy is diminished all avenues close, the road to reform is blocked, and decades of work by dedicated caring people can be destroyed over night. Democracy is important to us all, most especially to people who give voice to animals.