Blacklist Blackwater

On Monday, the Iraqi government announced that it was revoking the license of Blackwater USA, the private security firm, to operate in the country. This came after the reported killing of eight Iraqi civilians by Blackwater employees. The United States government should respect the wishes of the Iraqi government and cease to employ Blackwater security forces in Iraq. Furthermore, the practice of using private security forces in the place of U.S. soldiers should be halted altogether.

According to the Department of Defense, which overseas all branches of the military, there are currently about 129,000 private contractors in Iraq, of all nationalities and from different firms. About 4,600 serve in various “combat” roles, such as personal bodyguards for important officials or driving and protecting vehicular convoys.

By far the largest and most well known private security contractor is Blackwater USA. “Security professionals” is the term that Blackwater prefers when describing its employees, many of whom are former special operations personnel from U.S. military branches. However, critics often refer to these professionals as modern-day mercenaries; soldiers-for-hire who retired or are cherry-picked from the military by Blackwater and firms like it, often attracted by the higher wages and comparatively lax disciplinary standards.

This is not to say that the government should never contract out services to the lowest bidder in order to streamline operations or increase capabilities at home or abroad. But Blackwater’s contracts in Iraq alone, which total $800 million, were mostly no-bid contracts granted by the Department of Defense. Blackwater also holds similar contracts to provide its services in Afghanistan, and it worked for both the U.S. government and private individuals to protect buildings and provide relief in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

And Monday’s incident is not the first time that Iraqis have complained about the aggressive, ruthless, and often senseless tactics of private contractors in Iraq. In fact, the complaints are commonplace and have been widely reported. In one brutal example, last Christmas Eve a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a security guard for a high-ranking Iraqi official. (The contractor made it to the U.S. Embassy, where he was extradited and has yet to be held accountable for any crime.)

Further, Blackwater’s disregard for the law has been registered in these other operations. Notably, a formal complaint was lodged against contractors in Afghanistan after a contracted plane crashed in 2004, leaving three United States soldiers dead. In a successful suit filed by the families of the soldiers claiming that the contractors were in violation of multiple laws, four contracting firms were named: Aviation Worldwide Services LLC, Presidential Airways Inc., STI Aviation Inc., and Air Quest Inc. According to the report, these are all subsidiaries of the Prince Group, the military contracting arm of which is Blackwater USA.

Given that Blackwater employees have a history of disregard for the law and an overly aggressive stance when performing their jobs abroad, it is disappointing—yet not surprising—to learn from The New York Times that the United States government has not clarified whether they are officially subject to either American or Iraqi laws at all. Therefore, it is unlikely that the U.S. government will end its important relationship with Blackwater even after the Iraqi decree—more than likely, it will simply be pushed into the legal gray area where the bulk of Blackwater’s business resides.

According to its Web site, Blackwater USA’s mission statement is: “To support national and international security policies that protect those who are defenseless and provide a free voice for all with a dedication to providing ethical, efficient, and effective turnkey solutions that positively impact the lives of those still caught in desperate times.” While vague, the sentiment has strange echoes of the one that can be found on the Department of Defense Web site, which states, in part, that the primary task of “the military departments is to…perform warfighting, peacekeeping and humanitarian/disaster assistance tasks.”

The question is: Why is the United States government paying Blackwater $800 million to do something its own soldiers are trained to do? It is not that their sacrifices are not important and tragic—the men in the 2004 bridge hanging in Fallujah were Blackwater employees—but that they are unnecessary and disruptive to the ideal and the exercise of America’s volunteer military. Let’s put that $800 million toward better protecting, compensating, and relieving our own soldiers and National Guardsmen by increasing pay, equipment, and recruiting efforts.

It has been estimated that over 1,000 private contractors have died in Iraq since 2003. According to the Department of Defense’s Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 3,783 soldiers have died in the same period. And nearly 1,000 more have died defending the freedom of Iraqi in some form or another that is officially recognized by the United States government.

The practice of hiring private contractors to do the work of the United States military at home and abroad is despicable and should be ended. This is especially so given the past and current record of behavior of these contractors, the fact that they are not legally accountable for their actions, and that they are putting their own lives and those of others at risk for a price rather than as a service.



Robert G. King ’09-’10, a Crimson editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Winthrop House.