Blackwater Hell

Lindsay Beyerstein has a fascinating post on her encounters with Blackwater in New Orleans.

The Blackwater dude was acting as a glorified rent-a-cop on the sidewalk, about two blocks from the main media staging area for New Orleans, which was already amply secured by US military and law enforcement.

What I didn't realize at the time was that these Blackwater guys thought of themselves as frontline soldiers in a literal war zone, ready to use deadly force at the slightest provocation. That was an unfounded estimate, in the middle of the day in downtown New Orleans several days after the city had been secured by the legitimate authorities.

We certainly weren't seeing that level of aggression or anxiety from the 82nd Airborne or the NOLA police, or the National Guard, or anyone else in the vicinity.

Newsweek's Michael Hirsh wrote the best opening paragraph I have read in an op-ed in ages.

Imagine a universe where a man can gun down women and children anytime he pleases, knowing he will never be brought to justice. A place where morality is null and void, and arbitrary killing is the rule. A place that has been imagined hitherto only in nightmarish dystopian fiction, like “1984,” or in fevered passages from Dostoevsky—or which existed during the Holocaust and Stalinist purges and the Dark Ages. Well, that universe exists today. It is called Iraq. And the man who made it possible is George W. Bush.

U.S. military personal has been in shootouts with Blackwater. Servicemen view mercenaries with complete disdain. The Iraqi people hate Blackwater even more intensely. The Bush administration simply makes matters worse by allowing Blackwater to do what they want without fear of criminal prosecution. Bush refuses to public chastise the security firm. The White House wonders why things work out poorly for them. Blackwater is a classic example.

In related news: the Iraqi government claims they have a video of Blackwater security personal opening fire at civilians.