Throw the Bloody Blackwater Bastards Out!

Were the Geek the letter writing type, he would be tempted to write to the Iraq Ambassador to the United States. The purpose would be to offer advice.

The advice would be simple. Since the current American administration and Congress are both too spineless and too enamored of what Texans call big "bidness" to do the job, you have to do it. You have to evict Blackwater USA immediately and without undue ceremony.

It's in your country's best interests to kick Blackwater's gun-totting, rent-a-thugs out. Right now.

Because of the dilatory practices of the Pentagon, to say nothing of major Constitutional questions, the trigger-pullers responsible for the most recent unnecessary wasting of Iraqi civilian lives will never stand before a court-martial.

The Geek is certain that the Iraqi government was relieved a year or so back when Congress passed legislation placing employees of contractors such as Blackwater under military law. It seemed to be a step up from the regulation promulgated by Paul (I'm-in-charge-here) Bremer during his period as American pro-consul.

The Bremer regulation was redolent of extraterritoriality such as practiced by the US and other powers in China. Bremer, showing his usual ignorance of history and contempt for reality, dictated that employees of foreign contractors in Iraq would be exempt from Iraqi criminal jurisdiction. Undoubtedly, the neo-con nitwits at the Pentagon assured all who expressed a concern that this diktat was simply the equivalent to the many status-of-forces agreements extant between the US and host governments around the world.

That just ain't so.

The correct analogy would be the extraterritoriality treaties (aka unequal treaties) between the Great Powers and China. This get-out-of-jail-free agreements were justified by the bland assertion that citizens of "advanced" countries must not be subjected to the codes and processes of "lesser breeds without the law."

To mention that these treaties were resented by the government of the "lesser breed" would seem unnecessary.

While the Bremer voyage back to the "good old days" of extraterritoriality has ended, the court-martial alternative is unrealistic. No procedures have been established to implement the law. Severe Constitutional questions must be addressed at some time in the future to see if the law even passes muster.

In effect, extraterritoriality still exists! With a difference--the likelihood that any Blackwater gunslinger would ever stand trial in any American court is so close to zero that you would need an electron microscope to find it.

Of course, the Iraqi Ambassador would realize that jurisdiction would never be granted by Washington to an Iraqi court--even if a Blackwater shooter is seen plugging a baby on video. After all, the Iraqi's are one of those "lesser breeds without the law." It's OK with us if they string up Saddam, but throw one of our people in an Iraqi slam? Forget it!

While you're at it, Mr Ambassador, you might advise your government to take a hard look at the latest wrinkle in the security contracting bidness. Hiring East African nationals.

You read that right. US and other foreign providers of security services in Iraq are seeking to widen their profit margins by hiring less expensive personnel from Kenya and other East African nations (Somalia perhaps? Those boys have a lot of recent experience with security in a violent environment. Hmmm.)

Without some quick, accurate thinking and fast action, the Iraqi government might find itself with even more unhappy (and dead) civilians on its collective hands. What a vision to consider! Foreign companies hiring third country nationals to protect fourth country nationals in Iraq. With nobody from the shooters on the street to the bosses in the boardrooms having more than a theoretical legal accountability for their actions.

The Iraqi government may not be able to agree on oil revenue sharing, oil field development, power sharing among the various factions. But, it ought to be able to agree that Iraqi civilians dying as unaccountable foreigners put another notch on their weapons is a poor idea.

In short, throw the foreign security firms out. If the Coalition Forces including the Iraqi military and police forces cannot protect the necessary international civilian presence, then these people, including US Foreign Service and akin personnel have to take their chances. Or be withdrawn.

Congress and the current administration could act. Either or both could require the ending of private security contracts. The Geek won't hold his breath though. Congress and the current administration are responsible for the presence of Blackwater and other firms.

The current administration has the motto: "Our pencils have no erasers!" Congress has shown itself worthy of Theodore Roosevelt's famed quip, "I've met banana splits with more backbone."

Is it likely that either will step up and demand an end to both de facto extraterritoriality and the presence of private armies?

What do you think?

Get a grip on this.

Blackwater USA and others of its ilk don't protect US interests. Blackwater USA and its ilk don't help develop security and stability in Iraq.

Blackwater USA and others of its ilk only help al-Qaeda in Iraq and similar groups. Blackwater USA is in effect America's enemy.

It Doesn't Matter--Paul Bremer is Still an Ass

Paul Bremer, the first US Proconsul in Baghdad, is in a snit. To err on the side of accuracy, the one time panjandrum of rebuilding Iraq following our invasion is throwing a hissy-fit.

The cause of Bremer's tantrum is the offhand statement to an interviewer's question by the Commander Guy hisself. Bush allowed that Bremer fired the entire Iraqi military unilaterally.

Of course, this was an all-too-typical case of Bush's inability to wrap his brain around his tongue. Everyone who was aware of what was happening in Washington and Baghdad in those heady days of false victory knows diddly well that nothing significant was done in Iraq without clearance all the way up the chains of command.

Note the plural ending, chains of command. One of the major initial problems in Iraq was the existence of two parallel chains of command, one military and one civilian. This was a stupid and unnecessary complication.

For Bremer, it was an irritant. He wanted full-span control of all he surveyed. Sharing it with the military was not in his game plan. Even more annoying was the reality that his immediate predecessor, who was replaced with graceless rapidity, not only was a retired military chap but also favored keeping the Iraqi army intact albeit cleansed of Saddamist loyalists.

Keeping the army intact was both logical and self-evident. Soldiers, in common with the members of the civil service (which was also fired by Viceroy Bremer), wanted to keep their jobs, keep a paycheck coming, take care of their families.

Wow! Is that a surprise or what?

Since the US controlled the money flow, keeping the army on the job was the best way of assuring a useful degree of loyalty. At the very least, keeping the soldiers at work would limit the number of politically disaffiliated individuals who knew how to use weapons, make bombs, and, if provoked, raise all kinds of hell.

The Geek has heard various accounts of who and when the army disbandment policy emerged. Some have fingered Bremer as the Deep Thinking Big Brain behind it. Others have disagreed with that, at least in part.

Many stories, most of which the Geek finds credible, suggest Bremer in a supporting role, with major responsibility resting on the same rabid neo-con ninnies in the Pentagon that planned the invasion. That would be Doug Feith, Paul Wolfewitz in the role of Chief Lackey, Don Rumsfield playing Darth Vader, Dick Cheney as the Black Eminence and W. Bush, the Commander Guy, doing his usual thing--signing whatever Cheney wanted him to.

As the letters Bremer pulled out of his files to share with the mainstream media make clear, the Commander Guy did sign off on the idiotic notion of firing the army. It's irrelevant.

Whether Bremer acted without authority (a proposition the Geek finds preposterous on the face of it) or developed an idea which was fully embraced by the brain dead ideologues of the Pentagon and White House is unimportant. It's a mere symptom. Not the disease.

The disease is a combination of unmitigated arrogance, ideologically driven stupidity, and intellectual/moral cowardliness. As the Geek has argued before, the invasion was based on false premises. It was targeted against a threat which never existed save in the imaginations of neo-cons determined to force the Iraqis "to elect good men."

While some in the State Department obviously thought about the day after victory, those plans, whatever they might have contained in detail, came to nothing against the opposition of Cheney and his fellow neo-con zombies.

Firing the Iraqi army will go down as a self-defeating notion that is difficult to match in recent history. Offhand, the Geek can come up with only one which ranks in the same league with it.

Way back in the closing days of the Eisenhower Administration, our man in Saigon, Ngo Dinh Diem, in response to US pressure inaugurated a program of "land reform." The particular wrinkle he introduced to what otherwise was a good idea in the rarefied air of theory was providing land to fellow Catholic refugees from North Vietnam.

OK, so far. But there's more to the story.

The land Diem gave away was high quality farmland. It was already occupied. That was fine with Diem. He had the former occupants relocated at gunpoint to inferior crowded areas.

The displaced farmers were righteously annoyed. They showed it. They became Viet Cong.

The enemy.

So did much of the forcibly unemployed Iraqi army.

It's a small step from soldier to insurgent. They're in the same business. Just competitors.