Blackwater's security contra tors are accused of murdering Iraqi civilians without any real provocation. Now comes the accusation that it was official Blackwater policy to kill Muslims, in fact, to target them as a part of a twisted Christian Crusade against Islam. Although the US State Department canceled Blackwater’s contract in Iraq following findings that company security guards opened fire in Baghdad in September, 2007, and killed seventeen Iraqi civilians, Blackwater had free reign under the Bush Administration, and, according to one employee, Prince, "...encouraged his staff to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis." He added... "It appears that Mr Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who had provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct. Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades." Although the company, now operating under the name Xe, lost its US government contract in Iraq, it is still the largest of the State Department's private security contractors.
So, if I understand these charges correctly, the US government knowingly hired a right-wing mercenary hit-squad, masquerading as security whose real mission it was do an ethnic cleansing of the Muslim world?!" All in our name. By the way, the accusations also include prostitution, drug smuggling, child prostitution, tax evasion and coercion of witnesses including death threats against the employees testifying against them now. Notwithstanding the total inanity of that plan, was it enough to just wreak havoc and incite the population enough for Cheney and his boys at the Pentagon and Halliburton to profit from the mayhem? Did they really think that a handful of extremely well-paid hit men (while our own soldiers and their families struggled on salaries considered barely modest) would be able to turn the tide and wipe out Islam in Iraq and Afghanistan with machine guns and grenades?
If this case does not speak to the absolute moral corruption at the heart of US policy under Bush and his gang of pirates, I don't know what does. It is hard to believe that this is not tied to Cheney's secret, black-ops fund that was exposed earlier this year by the NY Times and other publications. But what occurs to be is that all this 'white mischief' engaged in by US leadership in our name is that it so completely corrupts any moral standing we have in the world and says to those receiving their daily dose of American policy at the end of a bullet or a bomb, that the ideals behind our democracy are only hypocrisy. A cover for what we are really up to and what we've been up to all along--American hegemony. That what we really want is to take the resources of the planet by force and continue the subjugation of anyone that gets in the way--an ideology that has been in place since before recorded time.
If we are going to be able to address the people around the world who seem intent on killing us, don't we have to address whether their complaints against us have any merits? Osama bin Laden and his minions have accused America of engaging in a holy war against Islam--a new 'Crusade". George Bush used exactly those words and this time, I don't think he was mangling the language. Bush/Cheny et al have done something I did not think possible-make Osama seem like his jihadist campaign is justified.
Eric Prince and Blackwater expose the horribly reality of so many people's experience of America. While I am no fan of Islamic fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism of any stripe also seems to drive people insane eventually. Blackwater's vicious, corrupt and reprehensible actions, officially sanctioned for years by the Bush Administration, have done such great damage to our reputation and fostered nearly inextinguishable rage against us, that I am not sure if even President Obama's new programs and overtures can calm the waters. And as I watch and listen to the racist mobs at town hall meetings and on Limbaugh, Coulter and Beck's supremacists' airwaves fan the flames of hate and suspicion, I struggle with choosing the available legal and civic systems to address these misinformed and twisted actors as they try to desperately cling to privileges they have not earned--the affirmative action "for whites only" that has been an institution in America since we first arrived and snatched it from under the natives. This is more than just "bad behavior." These people too claim superiority because of their Christian ideology...a sense of righteousness that allows them to murder and maim in the name of...quite frankly, I am not sure what book they are reading. I will admit to being a lapsed Catholic but I spent years in catechism class. I just don't remember this Jesus they speak of that provides them cover to unleash such pain, hatred and suffering all over the world and yet sleep so soundly at night.
So do we fight fire with fire, or do we write and debate and pray and hope for a better day? To paraphrase James Farmer, Jr. in The Great Debaters, "...you better hope I choose the latter." But that's what I'm going to say. What do you think?
a/r
No comments:
Post a Comment