Private Crime in a Public War

Published January 08, 2009 @ 08:06AM PT

Sifting focus away from the domestic criminal justice system, CNN.com reported on Tuesday that five former Blackwater employees have plead not guilty to murder charges in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis. The defendants claim that they were defending themselves on a battlefield in a war zone, and thus that the killings were justified. The defendants also claim that they are immune from the current prosecution. I don't think that I am being hypocritical when I say that this is one of those cases where I have little sympathy for the criminal defendants.

To begin with, the whole idea of private contractors enforcing America's will abroad on a battlefield is strange to me. It seems to put an artificial barrier between private and public power. Think of these guys as an extension of the US military. They loose my sympathy because they are an integral part of concerted exertion of force and violence that I find completely objectionable. The one sympathy vote they get arises from the artificial public/private barrier at play here. I am guessing that these Blackwater employees feel pretty picked on. And in a way they are right. Focusing on Blackwater just because they are a private organization can divert attention away from other attrocities and civilian casualties committed in this war. The fact that they are a private organization is problematic for a whole host of reasons, but the violence they participate in abroad should be understood as part of the US military's overall program.

The second prong of the defense's legal theory is also troubling. Blackwater's position seems to be that they are subject to no court's jurisdiction. Not only are they innocent, they just can't be touched by a court. The Justice Department can't go after them, the Iraqi government can't go after them, and the State Department supposedly offered some sort of immunity. They get to basically just do what they want. This utter lack of oversight and control is exactly the sort of thing that Change.org's immigration blogger Dave Bennion criticized in a recent post.

And in case you are wondering, yes, I did link to Dave's post because it mentions one of my former posts.

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Comments (3)

They are mercenaries and they have been used in all our wars(think Air America to the Hessians(sp?) in the revolutionary war) Blackwater is just more of the same good old fashioned American war machine that has been grinding the world down for 200 yrs now. I find it ironic that a country with what I would consider basically good people that the fact we are a " war nation" has been so shielded from those "good people". The fact we have caused more disruption than any modern nation is bipolarly joined with the fact we are also the most generous nation( assuage of guilt perhaps). Study our history of hiring mercenaries to do our dirty work and note there is a tacit "immunity" to the position that we are seeing in our "blackwater" type enterprises. It is just another instance of selective enforcement that has let our biggest criminals walk free and become president(~j/k)
JF

Posted by james freitas on 01/08/2009 @ 02:30PM PT
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The real problem is not private contractors, it is that our Miltary does not have the numbers or training to be a police force. The Miltary should never be used to occupy a territory/country once its mission (i.e. winning) is over. That is and should be a responisability of some other type of Goverment organization, preferably Internationally in nature.

The Miltary is not designed, trained nor qualifed for the aftermath of something like Iraq

Posted by Michael Ricker on 01/08/2009 @ 02:49PM PT
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As a retired and disabled Veteran, Viet-Nam era. I once heard a quote from a great man. General Douglas MacArthur that went along the lines of we cannot win a war on foreign soil because we have not the will nor the committment to do so. Now if they come to KY, I will be more than willing to do whatever it takes.

Posted by Robert Silvey on 01/15/2009 @ 06:09AM PT
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Brian Sullivan is a housing attorney at MFY Legal Services in New York City. He writes about housing issues for people with criminal records, mental health issues in the criminal justice system, and his close, personal friendship with a Golden Retriever-Chow named Nelly.