The story in today's NY Times is as depressing and horrifying and maddening as any to come out of our murderous Iraqi adventure yet. Everyone needs to read it, and remind people that the common calculus of one "protected" American in Iraq being worth the lives of "XXX number" of innocent Iraqis, is unjustifiable, inhuman, and as criminal as it would be if Iraqis ran around today and machine gunned 50 people in Central Park.
Foreigners (us) who somehow imagine they have the "right" to drive around a sovereign nation, thousands of miles from their own country, and fire automatic weapons and grenades into scores of innocent people in a busy city square in the middle of a work day, murdering 17 humans just trying to go about their daily lives, because they "felt threatened," are not American "heroes."
They certainly don't resemble what my retired Air Force Captain father taught me about being American. Or more importantly, about being a hero.
When people are killed with government sanction we call it War, or Execution. As long as it's the government doing the killing, it's presumed legal and morally justified. We don't call it Murder.
But what if non-governmental entities kill people? Like mafia hits on rivals? Or drug lords fighting for territory? Or Al Qaeda? We call that murder, organized crime, and "terrorism." Civilization long ago decided that only the State can legally kill people.
So what do we call it when people are killed by Exxon, or Proctor and Gamble, or Blackwater, Inc.???
Republicans call it "heroic."
When did killing for profit become heroic? Actually, it never will.
Real heroes look like teachers in New Orleans, cops walking beats in my nieghborhood, doctors in urban emergency rooms, firemen, pari-medics, scientists, and random individuals finding courage at unexpected moments who save the lives of strangers.
There are real heroes stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan. G.I.s with the guts to "rat" on platoon "mates" who murder and torture people, despite discouragement from "higher-ups." Medics who frantically try to stop bleeding, helicopter pilots who fly blown-up kids to field hospitals, military nurses who work for a fraction of civilian pay.
But there are no "heroes" taking home six figure paychecks as gunmen for hire at Blackwater. The mercenaries who particpated in this massacre are taking those paychecks from "us," and committing crimes in our names. Their blood money is being paid with our tax dollars, while their bosses kick-back thousands to the people who gave them the contracts, making huge "donations" to the Republican Party.
We know the Blackwater Massacre in Baghdad is simply a larger example of the smaller crimes that happen every day in this disaster known as the American Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.
We know Blackwater has been shooting Iraqis for years, possibly murdering countless other innocent people, before this massacre. And we know their employees, these mass murderers, have spent zero time in jail.
Perhaps these "employees" are the ultimate "corporate whores." People who kill because their boss tells them to. Because killing people is part of their their "job description." Because Republican appointees in the State Department SAY it's "ok" for private corporations hired by them to kill. (When you or I hire such people, it's called "murder for hire." Apparently, like James Bond, people appointed by GW Bush at the State Department get a license to kill.)
Or perhaps they really BELIEVE in what they are doing. In other words, these are POLITICAL killings, carried out by people with political agendas. "Patriotic Americans" just trying to remake the world with the new Republican eugenic theory of extermination.
We know Republican political appointees hired a Republican "security company," started out of thin air with the inheritance and family connections of a millionaire Republican donor, in order to outsource this Republican "war" by controlling their own private Republican army. (In Iraq they call them "militias").
We know this whole phenomena of a "private military" is the result of people who hate democracy, and the American government we spent 200 years building, and which so many of our forefathers have died defending. Our government, and our democracy, is their first enemy. Our Consitution, and our laws, are simply "bureaucratic red tape," and impediments to their own personal power and enrichment. Naturally they want their own private army. Reagan did it in Central America (and should've been impeached for it.) It is entirely consistent with the philosophy of the people who hate our government and call themselves Republicans.
So let's call the Blackwater episode in Iraq what it is. A massacre. Mass murder on a sunny afternoon in downtown Baghdad.
And let's call these "private military contractors" what they are. Murderers and torturers for hire. The armed militia wing of the Republican Party.
It's time to restore the honor of our country and our military. Time to get rid of these private Republican crony corporate mercenaries, and let the legitmate American military defend us again. As my father did, and as the patriotic citizens of our country have done for the past 200 years.
If there are really "not enough" soldiers in our volunteer military to "protect us," perhaps the ugly truth about this war is "free market" based. There are simply not enough Americans who really believe their country is threatened, OR that "the job" in Iraq is worth volunteering for.
And you know what? They are right.