Blackwater, murderers for hire

I was recently pleased to hear that Blackwater have finally been kicked out of Iraq. 

Ever heard of Blackwater? I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't, but they've had quite a hand in world affairs of late. Basically they are the people involved when you hear the phrase 'Private Contractor' in Iraq. "Private contractor killed in roadside bombing", oh dear, was he a plumber there to restore water to orphanages? No, he is a Mercenary, a gun for hire. The role of mercenaries or PMCs (Private Military Companies) in the Iraq war has been largely glossed over but they are there in huge numbers. A 2005 report puts the number at 20,000. That's almost as many troops as the US have in Afghanistan at the moment. 

The term Military Industrial Complex refers to the relationship between the military and the private defence companies that are contracted to provide them with weapons and support. War is good for business and all that. The war in Iraq 'cost' a trillion dollars, but where does that money actually go? It has to be spent somewhere, and it is, it's spend on equipment, research, construction etc all carried out by private companies. Some genius decided that there was a huge sector of the War Machine that was unprofitably being run in house, namely the soldiers. So they have started privatising that. Hence the PMCs. 

Why would you use PMCs instead of regular Army? Well it's basically the same reason you use contractors in any situation. They guarantee the skills and they, not you, are responsible for what they get up to. Paul Bremer, the first Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (read Governor) of Iraq was a big fan of PMCs and in the aftermath of the invasion he gave the PMCs full immunity to Iraqi laws. As immune the US military was to any sort of criticism, they were still accountable to the military judicial system. Blackwater and the other PMCs on the other hand were immune to Iraqi law and military scrutiny. So basically they were able to do whatever the hell they wanted. 

A bunch of ex-special forces guys with shitloads of cash and a cowboy attitude were running around Iraq doing God knows what with no fear of recriminations for their murderous actions. And they were murderous. Google "Blackwater deaths" to get a sense of how these boys operated. 

Well, thank God, they have finally been banned from operating in Iraq. What did it take to get people to focus attention on them? The murder of 17 civilians in an Iraqi market. 

Prosecutors said the guards unleashed a gruesome attack on unarmed Iraqis, with the dead including young children, women, people fleeing in cars and a man whose arms were raised in surrender as he was shot in the chest.

If you want to see how these boys roll check out this video. It's not Blackwater but another PMC called Aegis. Sickening disregard for human life. Their job is to guard people, which translates into kill anyone who comes too close, be they militant or mother. 

Bastards. Good riddance to Blackwater, but it's one down, hundreds to go I'm afraid. 

Gaza Madness II

The whole world has been looking at the situation in Gaza as either a tragedy or an inevitable consequence of repeated attacks, but I was recently enlightened with a different interpretation of events there. Basically I was shown the timing implications of these events and, to me, it all seems to make a lot more sense. 

Hamas have been firing rockets into Israel for months, since the last cease fire broke down. According to the Israeli spokesman on CNN last night the lack of reaction from Israel was a great testament to their willingness to reduce the impact of retaliation on the Gazans but then they just reached their breaking point and had to act. Maybe, maybe not. Another theory is that they timed this offensive to coincide with the departure of the outgoing American president. 

What the hell does Bush care about international conflicts right now? He's running down the clock and everyone is too busy asking him retrospective questions about his last eight years. Obama is getting in in four days and then all eyes will be on him. He will have to make a statement on the Gaza offensive and people will actually care because it's not bush. 

So my theory is that the offensive will end before the 20th. Well, it's not actually my theory, it's a friend of mine's who started calling it a week ago but he doesn't have a blog and I do so I'm stealing it for my own. The Israelis have started this massacre at a time when there is no way the US president would get involved in any sort of peace mediation and as such they have a few weeks of free reign. After the new Prez gets in and people start asking him questions about it the Israelis will stop it and claim a cease-fire has been reached. 

Why does this matter? Well, it takes away some legitimacy from Israel's claims that it had no choice to attack and kill all those people in Gaza because if fact they did have a choice and they chose to do it when the US would not get involved. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but much like I stole this theory from my friend, so to will I return its failure to him should it prove incorrect.  

Gaza Madness

Death Toll: 

Palestinians: 800

Israelis: 13

Enough said eh? 

Well, maybe not. 

I know that this situation is one of the most complex and long running conflicts around and it is usually foolish to look at any event outside of a historical context but I think this is an exception. The facts here are that there are now 800 Palestinians who are dead and many times more injured as a direct result of a decision by Israel. You simply cannot justify that. 

The phrase of the day is 'proportional use of force'. Israel says they will do whatever it takes to stop the rocket attacks by Hamas, but what does that mean? If they killed everyone in Gaza and bulldozed all the buildings down they would stop the attacks, but that would be considered disproportionate. There is clearly a point where the use of force is unjustified. Israel have clearly crossed that point. 

The most sickening aspect in my book is the use of air strikes in such a heavily populated area. The IDF PR spokespeople can talk about 'tactical strikes' all they want but everyone knows that bombs miss and terrorists don't stand out in empty carparks waiting to get bombed. So what you get is huge numbers of civilians killed. Innocent people, living in a shithole, having little hope of a better life, get blown to pieces because their neighbour in 13A is a member of Hamas. Not right in my book. It's not right when the Yanks do it in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's not right when the Israelis do it in Gaza. 

Of course what does it all matter when Israel doesn't really care what the world thinks of them. The UN Security Council can do nothing because the US has veto power and they are 100% behind Israel. So the offensive keeps on going and we get bored of it as it slips off the front pages. Gaza gets set back another 20 years as their infrastructure burns and 100,000 Gazans have a new reason to strap bombs to themselves to try and inflict at least some damage to the Military Goliath that keeps smashing them from next door. 

But Hamas are terrorists. You can speak of elected governments all you like but firing rockets blindly into an area populated by civilians is pretty much the definition of terrorism. And once you are labeled the big T it's pretty much all over in terms of Western support for your cause nowadays. The US started this in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was quickly followed by other countries around the world. America set the precedent that you can do anything you want if you are trying to protect your people from terrorism. So the Israelis have the best comeback of all to world condemnation, "What would your country do if rockets were raining down on your people?". You sure as hell know what the yanks would do, and the UK and probably Australia. But that still doesn't make it right in my book. Israel are swatting flies with a sledgehammer. 

And yes, the rocket attacks are like flies compared to the military might of Israel. They are unguided rockets so if they managed to his anything it is pure blind luck. I'm sure they do an excellent job of terrorising the population under fire, but so does shooting rockets from fighter jets and helicopter gunships only that method kills several orders of magnitude more people. Here is a quote from Israeli Defence Ministry in 2006 about the rockets:

"...but we need to remember that Qassams [the Hamas Rockets] are more a psychological than physical threat."

Basically, desperate people do desperate things. The Gazans are living in a hellhole of a refugee camp and are continually subject to Israeli blockades and military strikes. There comes a point where it becomes useless to talk about the rationality of certain actions. If you are continually near starvation, have no hope of a better life and are constantly victimised by a much more powerful enemy then you are not going to act in a rational way. There are two ways to look at it. Either Palestinians are inherently evil people who have no capacity to live in peace or they are desperate people who act or support those who act in violent ways because they see no other method of being heard. 

I have faith in all humanity so I choose the latter. 

Boom!

An Australian is visiting Northern Ireland and he’s heard from some mates back home that he has to be careful which religion he claims to be while he is there. He walks into a bar one night and is not quite sure if it’s a Catholic or Protestant place so he plays it quietly and sits at the end of the bar minding his own business.

After a few pints he needs to take a piss so he slinks off to the toilet, making sure not to make eye contact with any of the regulars. As he is doing his business he hears someone behind him and then suddenly a sharp knife is pressing against his ribs.

“Are you Protestant or Catholic” says the unknown man.

“Neither,” says the quick thinking Aussie, “I’m Jewish”

“Wow,” says the unknown man, “If I’m not the luckiest Arab in Belfast”


You ever been in a situation where everyone is telling jokes about a certain topic and you have one ready then just as the conversation lulls some fucker changes the subject and you don’t get the chance to tell it? I had that the other day, but I have a fucking blog so I’m going to tell it anyways. Take that front bar of the Velizy Holiday Inn. Samboy has the last word.

The joke topic was Northern Ireland but the preceding serious topic was IRA terrorism. Being an Australian almost completely ignorant of ‘the troubles’ there I pretty much sat back in listened. To do an injustice to the intelligent people I was speaking with I will bastardly sum up the discussion with the paraphrase “We had our 9/11 back in 1980.”

Now I was speaking to a bunch of Poms here, and they were specifically speaking about London living under the threat of terrorist bombings by the IRA. I must say that the atrocities on both sides were amply covered, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m only talking about the bombings in London. As I said I know next to nothing about the specifics of the situation but it was interesting to contrast the lack of hysteria they showed when they then talked about the actual September 11 attacks. I’m sure more knowledgeable people can correct me but London was under the constant threat of terrorist bombings for much of the 1980s.

I then happened upon a BBC World Service documentary series that was examining The Troubles and the massive contrast between the situation of thirty years ago and the situation now. They were interviewing folks on both sides of the arena and comparing their attitudes back then to what they are saying now.

The message stressed the most by the representatives on both sides who were interviewed was that dialog was the key to the whole Northern Ireland solution. Without dialog, without bringing the two sides together to talk there would still be a massive renegade army in Northern Ireland.

As you can probably guess I’m about to draw parallels with today’s terrorism situation. But why the hell wouldn’t you? Every bunch of bastards out there fighting a war is doing it for some cause they believe in, but I’m sure ninety percent of them would rather be working for the Post Office and going home to their families with all their limbs. A negotiated cease fire is a better for everyone.

This much is obvious, but the problem lies with blanket statements like “We will not negotiate with terrorists” and “you’re with us or against us” being spewed by the world’s seemingly number-one terrorist negotiator, the USA.

Israel negotiates with Hamas, the Sir Lankan government negotiates with the Tamils, the British negotiated with the IRA and the US better fucking negotiate with the loose collection that is called the ‘Iraqi Insurgency’.

The silly thing is that it is almost certain that this negotiation is going on between the US forces and the Iraqi Humvee bombers, but it cannot be talked about publicly because the US does not negotiate with terrorists. The sooner this backroom peacemaking can be brought to the headlines the better in my opinion.

The phrase “One man’s Terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter” is not new but I think it should be in the back of everyone’s minds when we think about the wars currently being fought around the globe. I’ll throw out a request to my Histbusting friend Tom to highlight the various historical terrorist groups that we hold in good favour.

What I’m trying to say in too many words is that the discussion of the resolution in Northern Ireland where a terrorist army, fighting against a government, laid down their guns and found an amicable solution has given me hope that finding peace in Iraq is possible. Rather than the thousand ‘lessons learn’ examples out there we have a ‘best practice’ example, and I think the yanks should run with it.

War

I was going to write a blog about my recent trip to Bahrain (because I had to leave the country then return to get another visitor’s visa in the UAE) but I found the most interesting aspect of the trip was some of the people I met there; most notably, a bunch of American soldiers.

Now while this sounds like the intro to a gay porno I assure you it was all above board. Although I did have my shirt off at one point and the last few hours are kind of a blur... but anyway.

For a little backstory: I was in Bahrain for just under two days and I intended to spend them touring the capital city of Manama where I was staying. I went down to the lobby of the hotel to grab a map, and couldn’t help noticing the sign for the bar they had on the mezzanine level. Figuring I was going to need a few minutes to map out the tourist attractions I wanted to see, I went up to the bar, ordered a pint and studied my map.

It was there I met a friendly deep southerner named John, who was later joined by his mates Josh and Jeremy. That was at 1pm, and I was not to leave until well after midnight.

Besides the drunken friendships we forged, the most interesting thing about meeting these Seppos was getting first hand stories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most if not all of them had been in both theatres (to use the military parlance) and at first they seemed both relieved and a little bored to have been posted to the relative pre-school that is Bahrain.

I won’t lie to you. The beer, scotch, tequila and double jacks were flowing that day. But with it was the gradual unlayering of minds shaped by war. I have read libraries of experience of conflict, but very seldom heard about it in the first hand.

At first the conversation was a pissing contest of war stories. Well, actually, the first conversation was about American football and how it had nothing on AFL, but once we got on to the wars it was all about who had the most exciting story. Driving through Bagdad in a convoy that was attacked, an IED exploding right under the car, a piece of shrapnel just missing someone’s head, mortars dropping a few yards from where they were standing. Dick waving contests, but this was only seven or eight beers in.

Next came loneliness. These guys were all between 25 and 30, married and most had kids. Jeremy had been married less than six months ago and his wife was pregnant. He was stationed here for a year so he knew he would miss seeing his first child born. The heartbreak was tangible.

After that came the surprising confessions of what is essentially post traumatic stress disorder. As we got chummier the real effects of the events in the dick waving stories came out. As the tales of gunfights, mortars and bombs returned the same bragging smiles shown before were gone, and in their place was a pained face looking for understanding. The Vietnam cliché “you don’t know what it’s like man” came to mind.

One told me that the experiences of death and suffering he had were simply impossible to talk about with his wife upon his return home. He had nightmares and couldn’t explain to those around him what they contained. He said he sometimes got angry and hit his wife. I don’t want to excuse his behaviour here, but the look of confused regret in his eyes made me think of someone with a mental disorder more than a wife beater.

This was classic war trauma stuff, fitting any veteran’s tales from Vietnam or the great wars. I know stories like this are a dime a dozen if one chooses to tune into the twice weekly SBS horror docos (or better yet, Al Jazeera cable news service) but it is the first time I have heard it from someone firsthand, let alone a crying man telling me he wishes it could all just go away.

All I could think of was how many other bastards (on the yank’s side and orders of magnitude more on the other) are out there with the exact same experiences. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed many hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives but that is just the tip of the iceberg when considering the true cost they have wreaked upon human kind. Like a cancer, their effects spread out and infect all around them.

The problem with war is that it is so easily to distance yourself from it, or simplify it, or with a bit of work justify it. But that doesn’t change what it is. Send a million men to fight a million more and you have four million victims.

It seems no one gets out whole.