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Max Boot on Blackwater

by
October 3, 2007

I disagree with him about the necessity and legitimacy of mercenaries fighting alongside comparatively underpaid U.S. soldiers. And I'd have less of a problem if Blackwater, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy were deputized in some way that they became the equivalents of MPs and thus fell under martial jurisdiction.

Boot underplays the significance the Blackwater scandal has had on native perceptions of our continuing mission in Iraq. (It hardly matters that the worst-case depiction of the Sept. 16 shootings emanate from the Sadrists in the Ministry of the Interior. There are still 17 corpses and 24 wounded bodies that Blackwater and the U.S. government must answer for.) Also, is it really wise to be rah-rahing a private army that hasn't lost a man under its charge precisely because that army is not beholden to strict ethical standards of warfare?

The surge, let's not forget, had a powerful psychological concomitant of boosting Iraqi morale by securing neighborhoods long enough to allow civilians to build infrastructure, found small businesses and join police squads. It becomes harder to convince Iraqis that the Yanks with guns are buying the country time to allow for these developments when 18,000 of those Yanks can shoot people without consequence.

Boot at least sees the dire situation as it now stands:

It is outrageous that almost no American contractors have been held criminally liable for conduct in Iraq or Afghanistan, but hundreds of soldiers have been court-martialed. You can't blame this shortcoming on the security firms; they don't have the power to send their own employees to jail.

The problem is that there is a gray zone in the law when it comes to contractors on foreign battlefields. Congress has passed legislation to make clear that contractors fall within the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as civilian law (the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act), but neither the Department of Justice nor the Judge Advocate General's Corps has shown much enthusiasm for enforcing these rules. That needs to change.

I'd quite like to see a list of names of State Department personnel who may have left the public sector for jobs at Blackwater USA since 2003. Free enterprise, when it involves life-or-death decisions in war, should be dramatically less free.

Accept the Blackwater mercenaries – Los Angeles Times

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Michael is an editor of Nextbook and a contributing editor of Jewcy. His work has appeared in Slate, Gawker, New York, Democratiya, Reason, The New Criterion, The Weekly Standard, City Journal and Standpoint. His blog is Snarksmith.

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