Blackwater, USA - a private militia belonging to Republican social conservatives

As we try to get the Iraqi government to disband the secular militias and take back a monopoly of the use of force for the central government. Having a monopoly of of the use of force is a critical characteristic of an effective government. National governments without a monopoly of power are ineffective (as shown in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan) and frequently are subject to coups.

So what does it say about the Bush administration that it has been privatizing the military and handing both military and Intelligence functions over to private security firms (of which Blackwater, USA is currently the largest?) Blackwater is a large organization. "Blackwater has drawn contractors from their international pool of professionals, a database containing "21,000 former Special Forces troops, soldiers, and retired law enforcement agents," overall."

The owner of Blackwater, USA is scheduled to testify before congress about the recent Blackwater Baghdad Shootings in which at least eleven Iraqi civilians were killed. There is at present no evidence that the Blackwater shooters were under fire from any enemy source, and allegations that they were simply out of control.

Josh Marshall at Talking Point Memo describes Eric Prince's connection with both the Bush administration and with Prince's actions in creating and funding the social conservative ultra-right-wing organization The Family Research Council.

"Erik Prince is 37 years old. He founded Blackwater in 1997 with money he inherited from his father, Edgar Prince, the head of Prince Automative. The elder Prince and his wife were major Republican and conservative activists and funders. And Prince himself co-founded The Family Research Council with Gary Bauer and apparently provided the key early funding for the group.

According to Bauer, "I can say without hesitation that, without Ed and Elsa and their wonderful children, there simply would not be a Family Research Council."

Prince's sister, Betsy DeVos, is married is the former Chair of the Michigan Republican Party and her husband is Dick DeVos, failed candidate for governor of Michigan and scion of the DeVos family, founders of Amway and major funders of Republican and conservative causes.

Amway is privately owned by the DeVos and van Andel families. And to give some sense of the scale of their political giving, according to a 2005 Center for Public Integrity study, Dick & Betsy DeVos were the fifth largest political givers in the country during the 2004 election cycle. Richard DeVos Sr. & his wife were ranked third. And Jay Van Andel was ranked second.

Let's just say they give some real money to the Republican party and its candidates. And of course there are the DeVos Family Foundations which give money to conservative causes.

Back back to Betsy's brother Erik Prince, founder and CEO of Blackwater. Back in 1990 Prince interned for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Blackwater's lobbyist in DC is Paul Behrends, a former Rohrabacher aide who he met when the two worked for the congressman. Later he interned in the first Bush White House. But after doing so, he and his father broke with President Bush and supported the insurgent candidacy of Patrick J. Buchanan.

The then-22 year old Prince told the Grand Rapids Press, "I interned with the Bush administration for six months. I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with -- homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns."

In addition to running Blackwater Prince also serves on the board of Christian Freedom International."

Wikipedia provides an article on Eric Prince.

There are a lot of problems caused by having the government depend on contractors like Blackwater for what are essentially military and law enforcement functions, as well as the fact that they essentially use the government to train their personnel and then poach them away at a time the government is most in need of them. But the most significant is the lack of government control of their operations.

Eric Prince's testimony before Congress today will be a melange of conservative and social conservative ideology, presented by a multi-millionaire who inherited a fortune and does not want to pay any taxes. He wants to run his own country, and has no room for most of us who consider ourselves to be Americans. His activities are part of the reason for the Republican incompetence in running government. Count on it.