The private mercenary firm, Blackwater, has been in a lot of trouble with the Iraqi government over the killing of a number of Baghdad civilians last Sunday. Blackwater spokesmen say that their employees were providing protection to a Department of State convoy when the convoy was hit by an explosive device and came under fire from insurgents. The company spokesman says they returned fire. The Department of State Incident Report gives the company's version of events.
Prime Minister Maliki of the Iraq government disputes the story told by Blackwater, saying that, while an explosive device did go off, it was nowhere near the convoy and that the contract security people responded with excessive force, firing on civilian vehicles which were not threatening in any way and even using helicopters to fire on the civilians. Maliki has ordered Blackwater to leave Iraq. The Baltimore Sun provides a good article on the differing reports from Blackwater spokesman and from Prime Minister Maliki of the Iraqi government.
This gets especially interesting, more that just the cowboy antics that Blackwater is once again accused of. It is interesting in two ways. First, because Blackwater is not under the same regulations as most of the security contractors working in Iraq. Most security contractors in Iraq work under contracts from the Department of Defense. Because of similar incidents in which such security contractors (the euphemism for Mercenaries)Congress passed a law requiring that such mercenaries be brought under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ.) While apparently no DoD contractor has ever been charged under UCMJ, there is at least some effort by DoD to get incident reports and gather some information on alleged incidents they are involved in. Blackwater is not under the UCMJ because it has a contract with Department of State rather than with Department of Defense, and DoS has not made significant efforts to control them.
The second question is whether PM Maliki, as the leader of the government of Iraq established by the United States after the earlier government of Saddam was totally dismantled, will have any control over the criminal actions of the mercenaries that the U.S. government has contracted to operate in that country. PM Maliki has lifted the license Blackwater has to operate in Iraq. As the New York Times pointed out "Early in the period when Iraq was still under American administration, the United States government unilaterally exempted its employees and contractors from Iraqi law."
The efforts of Congress to bring the security firms under control have all given the DoD the power to control those firms it contracts with, but those the State Department contracts with are outside those controls. Much more important, the U.S. has no Status of Forces Agreement with the supposedly independent government of Iraq. Blackwater, USA is a private contractor owned and operated by the ultra conservative Erik Prince who has close ties to the Republican Party. Will the Bush administration and Condoleeza Rice permit PM Maliki to kick Blackwater out of Iraq?
There is little reason to doubt that the security contractors operating in Iraq have suffered from a lack of effective control of their operations. The conflict between what the government of Iraq accuses Blackwater of and what the Blackwater spokesman says they did is at present a "He said - He said" argument. It is hard to decide which side is telling the greater truth since there are few independently obtained reliable facts currently available to the rest of us.
Still, the best bet is that Blackwater did use excessive or even unnecessary force since it has operated without controls and has been encouraged to be highly aggressive in the performance of its defensive duties. Blackwater operatives have a reputation for such aggressive, even cowboy tactics. Using helicopters to fire on civilians inside the city of Baghdad demonstrates that they weren't very careful who they were shooting at.
Then, too, a reputation for such aggressiveness could be considered good for sales of their services. When someone is buying protection service and it comes down to a choice between two firms with equal apparent capabilities, the one that has a reputation for being more aggressive is likely to get the contract. This is, of course, speculation, but it is quite reasonable speculation when looking at someone selling the services of armed soldiers.
The trouble is, America is trying to fight a counterinsurgency as well as attempting to tamp down a civil war in Iraq, and success in a counterinsurgency goes to the side that gains the hearts and minds of the people of the country. The Blackwater incident is another indicator that the U.S. is not serious about trying to fight a counterinsurgency in Iraq. Blackwater's reputation for aggressive cowboy tactics will add to the reasons for the Iraqi people to demand that the American troops leave their country. Why shouldn't they? This incident with Blackwater demonstrates that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is part of the problem, not part of the solution to violence in Iraq.
The use of mercenary troops by the U.S. means using armed forces which are under no effective political control in a combat zone. At best they are handed a set of Rule of Engagement which are not enforced. That never works in a counterinsurgency because it makes enemies of those we need to befriend. But we can't replace the mercenaries in Iraq with government soldiers unless we start a draft. A draft is a political impossibility today in America.
That means we do not have enough trained and controlled troops to win in Iraq and no way to raise them other than hiring mercenaries. The mercenaries are beyond effective control. The best answer would be to get out of Iraq. Yet we also are convinced that we can't leave as quickly as logistically possible since that would leave Iraq as a failed state. America's invasion and incompetent occupation has left no remnant of effective central government in Iraq.
So we can't leave, but can't stay in Iraq and win without using the mercenaries. Talk about poor planning! Still, it is the lack of control over the mercenaries that is their worst fault. So the mercenaries must remain for a while longer, but be brought under tight and effective control. Not only must they be brought under control, they must be shown to be brought under control by very publicly charging, convicting and punishing some of the worst offenders and by placing ALL security contractors in Iraq under close and public inspection. If the Iraqi people are not convinced that all the American troops - including the mercenaries - are working for their betterment, then America has lost the counterinsurgency in Iraq and staying longer will just make the damage worse.
Unfortunately, this solution runs counter to the radical free-market ideology of the Bush administration and the Republican Party. Efforts to attempt such controls will quickly be derailed by politically connected Republican donors, particularly those in the security industry. Then, even if a solution is was attempted, the Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it is incompetent at conducting such control over any organization, even those like FEMA that are integral to the government itself. The complexities of actually doing something effective are beyond the abilities of the Bush administration.
While the Bush administration has repeatedly proven that it cannot "make the trains run on time," they are brilliant at public relations. Instead of fixing the problem they will instead do their usual action of trying to treat the problem as a public relations problem. In place of actually solving he problem, they will work to convince the American public that there is no problem. Oddly, since the real problem is public perception of American troops by the Iraqi public, they will not work as hard there to fix the PR problem. That's because they have fewer effective PR tools in Iraq and don't understand the public perceptions there. The PR effort there will be less intense.
What will not happen is any effective, centrally controlled effort by the Bush administration to actually fix the problems in Iraq caused by the out-of-control mercenaries there. That's just another can they will kick down the road to the next President, providing further fodder for conservatives to use to attack the incoming Democratic President in 2009 for losing Iraq.
The problems caused by the use of uncontrolled mercenaries in Iraq is a real one. They stem from poor planning and inadequate organization by the Bush administration both in the invasion of Iraq and the resulting occupation. Solving those problems will not provide a benefit to the Republican Party, so Congressional Republicans will block any effort to solve those problems, just as the Republicans are currently doing their best to prevent the Democrats from passing any legislation that solves American problems. Meanwhile the Bush White House will sit on its hands rather than recognize the difficulties it has created.
It's not a pretty picture.
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