ights abuses, and lack of accountability that characterize the industry, and also notes that the Bush Administration, in its emphasis on privatizing everything in sight, has a goal of moving 50% of military support operations into the hands of private contractors, and that already the military is incapable of performing many of its own vital support operations.

The real impact of such practices, however, is even worse:

Because they operate with little oversight, using contractors . . . enables the military to skirt troop limits imposed by Congress and to carry out clandestine operations without committing U.S. troops or attracting public attention. "Private military corporations become a way to distance themselves and create what we used to call ‘plausible deniability,'" says Daniel Nelson, a former professor of civil-military relations at the Defense Department's Marshall European Center for Security Studies. "It's disastrous for democracy."

There's much more.

UPDATE: Stormy Dragon (in the comments) quotes the Geneva Convention definition of "mercenary," which specifically exempts citizens of any "party to a conflict" from the provisions of the prohibitions on mercenaries, even if they meet the definition in every other way. For this reason, I was wrong to state (below) that it is a violation of the Geneva Convention for the Blackwater mercenaries to have been in Fallujah. They appear to fall under the exemption he quotes. However, I stand by my characterization of them as "mercenaries" in the general sense.

Because the Geneva Convention expressly bans the use of mercenaries -- individual soldiers of fortune who fight solely for personal gain -- private military companies are careful to distance themselves from any associations with such hired guns. . . .

[However. . . :]

DynCorp employees "are engaged in combatant roles, fighting in counterinsurgency operations against the Colombian rebel groups," says Peter Singer, a foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors. "Indeed, the DynCorp personnel have a local reputation for being both arrogant and far too willing to get ‘wet,' going out on frequent combat missions and engaging in firefights." DynCorp has not responded to the allegation. . . .

MPRI insists that it provided no combat training to Croatian troops . . . . But according to independent reports, the company taught basic infantry tactics to Croatian soldiers and explained how to coordinate assaults. In August 1995, after the training ended, the Croatian army launched Operation Storm, a U.S.-style military operation designed to take back the disputed Krajina region from the Serbs. The four-day assault was a bloody episode of ethnic cleansing. Croatian graduates of MPRI's training carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled civilians, leaving hundreds dead and more than 150,000 homeless. Afterward, the Croatians expressed their gratitude for MPRI's help. "They lecture us on tactics and big war operations," one officer told The Observer of London, "which is why we needed them for Operation Storm."

Note that Blackwater's Fallujah mercenaries were engaged in combat operations as well. Described as "guards" for a food supply operation, the four "contractors" - all ex-Special Operations forces - were carrying arms in a combat zone. The US military is now planning a massive assault - in the middle of an already-growing anti-US backlash across Iraq, and certain to further destabilize the situation - in retaliation for the deaths of four very highly-paid mercenaries whose presence, by an international treaty to which the US is signatory, was illegal in the first place. [NOTE: It may not have been strictly illegal under the Geneva Convention, due to an odd exemption that says citizens of a combatant nation cannot technically be "mercenaries" under that Convention. See the "UPDATE," above, and the comments, below. - KTK]

When the companies do screw up, however, their status as private entities often shields them -- and the government -- from public scrutiny. In 2001, an Alabama-based firm called Aviation Development Corp. that provided reconnaissance for the CIA in South America misidentified an errant plane as possibly belonging to cocaine traffickers. Based on the company's information, the Peruvian air force shot down the aircraft, killing a U.S. missionary and her seven-month-old daughter. Afterward, when members of Congress tried to investigate, the State Department and the CIA refused to provide any information, citing privacy concerns. "We can't talk about it," administration officials told Congress, according to a source familiar with the incident. "It's a private entity. Call the company."

In at least one case, a company has successfully shifted U.S. foreign policy to bolster its bottom line. In 1998, the government of Equatorial Guinea asked MPRI to evaluate its defense systems . . . . But the Clinton administration flatly rejected the company's request, citing the West African nation's egregious record of torturing and murdering political dissidents.

MPRI launched a full-scale blitz to overturn the decision, quietly dispatching company officials to work the hallways of the Pentagon, State Department, and Capitol. . . .

In 2000, the State Department did an about-face and issued a license to MPRI. Bennett Freeman, a high-ranking State Department official who initially opposed the deal, says he changed his mind after meeting with Lt. General Harry Soyster of MPRI, who convinced him that the company would include human-rights training in its work. . . . MPRI refuses to reveal the terms of its contract with Equatorial Guinea.

The conflicts of interest and political buy-outs that drive the industry are profiled as well:

After the Gulf War ended, the Pentagon, then headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a Halliburton subsidiary called Brown & Root Services nearly $9 million to study how private military companies could provide support for American soldiers in combat zones. Cheney went on to serve as CEO of Halliburton -- and Brown & Root . . . has since been awarded at least $2.5 billion to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations . . . . In March [2003], the Pentagon hired Cheney's former firm to fight fires in Iraq . . . .

It is precisely this concentration of experience that makes military firms so politically formidable. Their executives have worked with -- and sometimes commanded -- officials in the U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence communities. (Secretary of State Colin Powell describes General Vuono [of MPRI], his one-time boss, as "one of my dearest friends.") "Someone at MPRI opens the Defense Department phone book and says, ‘Oh, so-and-so, I served with him,'" explains Nelson, the former Marshall Center professor. "He picks up the phone: ‘Joe, remember me? I'm working with MPRI now. Hey, listen, bud, we have a real opportunity to go to Equatorial Guinea.' Nothing more complex than that. It is a relationship based on years of camaraderie." . . .

17 of the nation's leading private military firms have invested more than $12.4 million in congressional and presidential campaigns since 1999. . . .

In 2001, according to the most recent federal disclosure forms, 10 private military companies spent more than $32 million on lobbying.

It should be noted that only a small part of these companies' activities are actual mercenary operations. But their influence extends into all aspects of military policy. They are developing a monopolistic stranglehold on many military support areas, and influence policy with their lobbying and campaign contributions. They actually create wars for their own profit! They should be watched closely, and cut back as much as possible.

[Full Disclosure: I once worked for a consulting company that did some planning work for both DynCorp - mentioned in the article - and PRC, another major government contractor. It was minor, and I'm glad not to be doing it now.]

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Comments

The geneva convention Article 47 defines a mercenary as:

2. A mercenary is any person who:

(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;

(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;

(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and

(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

Even if we accept your argument that c. applies to the contractors killed in Falujah, parts d. and f. certainly do not.

Your attempts to demonize the contractors supporting the US military is disgusting.

Posted by: Stormy Dragon on April 5, 2004 05:52 PM

Stormy Dragon:

Good point about the Fallujah mercenaries. Section (f) above obviously does apply to them (they were not "sent by a State which is not a party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces"). However, (d) does not appear to apply to them - they were citizens of the US (which is a "party to the conflict"). Section (d) says that you're not a merc if your own country is involved in the fighting - even if you fight for profit and are not under military command - which seems odd, but there you have it. Every other part of the definition does apply to the Blackwater mercenaries.

So, under the Geneva Convention, they were mercenaries under every positive qualifying characterisitc (a - c), but are exempted due to the specific provision that the designation does not apply to for-profit, irregular forces of a country with a regular army in the field. For that reason, I was wrong to say that it was illegal under the Geneva Convention for them to be there because they were mercenaries under the Geneva Convention. Neither of those claims seems to be true.

They are just mercenaries under every reasonable definition, and it is wrong for them to be there whether the Geneva Convention prohibits it or not. Their profession is disgusting, and our government's use of hired killers - still less in a sensitive and unstable environment - is disgusting.

Posted by: Kevin T. Keith on April 5, 2004 06:18 PM

Sorry, I missed the "not" in item f. when I read it the first time.

I still object to you characterizing them as "hired killers". I don't see why going to Iraq to assist the US military is immoral--unless you want to argue that it's equally immoral for our soldiers to be there.

Posted by: Stormy Dragon on April 5, 2004 06:34 PM

It's wrong to be a mercenary at all, and it's wrong for a government to use mercenaries.

War is a horrible undertaking - the devastation and waste it produces are unconscionable. The only thing that can justify war is that it may prevent something even worse. The only thing that can justify fighting in a war is that one is contributing to the prevention of something worse than the war.

Mercenaries, by definition, fight for whoever pays them. They take "impious risks" for no good reason - for no reason that justifies what they do - or at the very least they demand no good reason before doing it. They are prostitutes of death, and, much more so than sex, killing is not something anyone can decently do wantonly.

To be sure, one can imagine a way to fight honorably for profit. If mercenaries carefully weighed each contract, and adopted only those causes they personally were committed to - committed to enough to risk their own lives for (and risking your life for $200,000 a year and an adrenaline rush is not the same as risking your life for a cause) - if they only employed appropriate and professional means to execute them, then it would be no worse to be a mercenary than to be a regular soldier. But no one in that line has ever done so. The mercenary corporations are famous for propping up whatever thugs will pay them, and for playing the most vicious enforcement roles demanded, while engaging in the most disgusting violations. Read the Mother Jones piece for more examples - mercenaries acting as CIA proxies when the CIA had been prohibited from working with human rights violators; mercenaries engaged in child-sex rings; mercenaries illegally engaging in combat under foreign dictators. Other examples are well-known: mass slaughter in Africa, death squads in Central America, drug trafficking under CIA oversight - there is nothing hired soldiers will not and have not done, and most of it is completely outside any oversight or control. US mercenary companies make a big play of working with the State Department, but bribe officials to license their private wars and freely break the rules when it's convenient. And the government, by hiring them, permitting them to operate freely, and turning over its most vital and most sensitive operations to their self-interested and unsupervised control, becomes complicit in their abuses.

Even if it were acceptable for the military to be doing what it is doing in Iraq, that doesn't make it acceptable for Blackwater and its ilk to be doing the same thing. Even a blind pig finds an acorn, and even an amoral, stateless corporate mercenary might wind up on the right side of a conflict once in a while, but that makes them no less offensive.

Posted by: Kevin T. Keith on April 5, 2004 07:01 PM

Stormy Dragon, the point is that it is NOT good for a large number of mercenaries working for our government to take over the job of our 'real' military.

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