Private contractors threaten U.S. democracy

In his masterful tome “The Prince,” Machiavelli warned future leaders: “Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe.”

Nearly 500 years later, an entrenched cabal of private contractors, closely aligned with the Bush administration and usually employing “ex” military officers, now dominates the U.S. national security state — and by extension, much of the world.

In the duplicitous “War on Terror,” mercenary armies like DynCorp, Blackwater USA, KBR, Custer Battles, and Aegis plunder Iraq and other victims of Pax Americana, operating with no rules of engagement and near-total legal immunity, usually earning at least four times the salaries of enlisted U.S. soldiers.

A Sept. 21 London Independent investigation labeled the $120 billion sector “arguably the fastest-growing industry in the global economy,” with operations in 50 countries, adding, “None of the estimated 48,000 private military operatives in Iraq have been convicted of a crime and no one knows how many Iraqis have been killed by private military forces, because the U.S. does not keep records.”

Occasionally, the most flagrant abuses make headlines. This week the Associated Press reported, “Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in a shooting last week that left 11 people dead.”

When not on urban patrol, these gangs provide “security” for U.S. diplomats, lucrative oil fields, and profiteering “reconstruction” contractors like Bechtel, Fluor corporation, and Halliburton.

The Hartford Courant calculated a total of 180,000 individual private contractors operating in Iraq, along with 169,000 U.S. soldiers.

Mercenaries are frequently linked to illegal arms dealing, resembling a privatized Iran-Contra network. On Sept. 22, the AP reported, “Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Blackwater USA employees illegally smuggled into Iraq weapons that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.”

A grim Chicago Tribune article linked DynCorp and Halliburton to global slavery rings, and in 2005, five defense lobbying groups campaigned against a Department of Defense proposal prohibiting contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor. Why?

Concurrently, weapons developers like SAIC, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics control classified monopolies on next-generation warfare and electronic surveillance. Their newest toys include microwave and “directed energy” laser weapons — designed for sticky “non-lethal” crowd control and looming space wars against Russia and China.

U.S. battle plans are often designed in concert with these companies, while employees can dominate classified government meetings.

Invariably, the chickens come home to roost. After Hurricane Katrina, forces from DynCorp, Wackenhut and Blackwater U.S.A. deployed onto the streets of New Orleans. And in 2006, the Department of Homeland Security awarded Halliburton a $385 million contract to construct “emergency detention facilities” around the U.S. to be activated during, amongst other things, a WMD terror attack.

Perhaps the camps will be staffed with sadistic dungeon masters from CACI or L-3 Communications Titan, whose “security officers” were implicated at the Abu Ghraib torture gulag in Iraq.

Neoconservatives clustered around Vice President Dick Cheney have engineered the privatization with frothing demagoguery, shilling for agitprop media syndicates while proudly obliterating the Bill of Rights and beefing up the absurd defense budget past $650 billion—allowing the wolves to feast on the carcass of the decomposing republic.

Fraudulent “anti-war” Democrats play the “good cop” role, pacifying the apathetic public with pandering platitudes and glittering generalities—simultaneously borrowing trillions of dollars for imperial conquests while angling for strikes on Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Pakistan, risking world war.

The tumorous growth of the military-industrial complex recalls the mercenary armies under Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years’ War. With brutal gangs often numbering over 100,000, Wallenstein’s forces were the Dyncorp of yesteryear, a death merchant for hire, earning from Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II the right to rape and pillage the conquered territories.

Today, these soldiers of fortune possess an apocalyptic array of weapons capable of converting Planet Earth into a pile of dust, or at best, a police-state control grid. But in the face of permanent annihilation, too many Americans wallow in whirlpools of systematic denial, avoiding this existential crisis because it’s “depressing” or “boring.” Others parrot puerile propaganda about “Islamofascism.”

But those hoping to prevent further bloodshed should consider more salient questions: What are the real costs of America’s permanent wartime economy? Should private armies remain legally immune? Exactly which mercenaries control the future of warfare, surveillance, and ultimately, human destiny? And how can they be stopped before leading to a new Thirty Years’ War?

Dan Abrahamson is a Sid Richardson College senior.

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