Re:Blackwater Founder Wants to Provide “Turn Key” Mercenary ...
by Lazare on Monday August 07, 2017 @05:28AM
(#14946274)
> "prevent from occuring" is a kind of weird thing to say in this context, to put it mildly. How would that work?
Come, you know perfectly well how it works. I live (you probably do too) in a country with a functioning state, which uses its monopoly on violence and alliances with other functioning states to ensure that no foreign military forces, PMCs, militias, or even organised gangs run around killing people.
Or in blunt terms, I pay my taxes, and in exchange, there's an army/police that 1) doesn't shoot me and 2) shoots people who try. It's pretty nice, or at least, a lot better than the alternative. But Iraq does not have that, and ONE of the ways that's shown is sure, that Blackwater can run around doing terrible things with almost complete impunity, and that is, yes terrible.
But you know why that happened? Because an actually nation state military came in and shot a bunch of people with, basically, complete impunity, and continued until everyone left alive agreed that this was fine, and yes, companies like Blackwater can get away with murder. It got a ton of press coverage at the time, you probably heard of it? [0]
If you look at the situation in Iraq, and you think "man, this is great, everything is amazing, except for these PMCs, that's the only issue here!" then I think you're blind.
If Iraq was allowed to, they'd have arrested and prosecuted every accused Blackwater opperative, confiscated all in-country assets and funds, and kicked the rest out. But they're not. And it's not Blackwater that stopped them.
I find it deeply disenguous to look at the things which were done, and shrug, and then blame Blackwater, and not the people pulling the strings, paying the bills, issuing the orders, and protecting the guilty. All of whom worked for the US government, not a private company.
> Prevention, at least an attempt at it, would be people with a spine not stopping to be loud about this stuff until every last company shut down. Then you prevented these incidents.
You think any of those incidents would have been prevented if the US had to use actual soldiers instead of contractors to do their dirty work?
> I agree that international law would not stop a nation bent on conquest, it certainly doesn't stop the US. But that's quite besides the point
On the contrary, I think that is precisely the point. Stop being so naive.
Come, you know perfectly well how it works. I live (you probably do too) in a country with a functioning state, which uses its monopoly on violence and alliances with other functioning states to ensure that no foreign military forces, PMCs, militias, or even organised gangs run around killing people.
Or in blunt terms, I pay my taxes, and in exchange, there's an army/police that 1) doesn't shoot me and 2) shoots people who try. It's pretty nice, or at least, a lot better than the alternative. But Iraq does not have that, and ONE of the ways that's shown is sure, that Blackwater can run around doing terrible things with almost complete impunity, and that is, yes terrible.
But you know why that happened? Because an actually nation state military came in and shot a bunch of people with, basically, complete impunity, and continued until everyone left alive agreed that this was fine, and yes, companies like Blackwater can get away with murder. It got a ton of press coverage at the time, you probably heard of it? [0]
If you look at the situation in Iraq, and you think "man, this is great, everything is amazing, except for these PMCs, that's the only issue here!" then I think you're blind.
If Iraq was allowed to, they'd have arrested and prosecuted every accused Blackwater opperative, confiscated all in-country assets and funds, and kicked the rest out. But they're not. And it's not Blackwater that stopped them.
I find it deeply disenguous to look at the things which were done, and shrug, and then blame Blackwater, and not the people pulling the strings, paying the bills, issuing the orders, and protecting the guilty. All of whom worked for the US government, not a private company.
> Prevention, at least an attempt at it, would be people with a spine not stopping to be loud about this stuff until every last company shut down. Then you prevented these incidents.
You think any of those incidents would have been prevented if the US had to use actual soldiers instead of contractors to do their dirty work?
> I agree that international law would not stop a nation bent on conquest, it certainly doesn't stop the US. But that's quite besides the point
On the contrary, I think that is precisely the point. Stop being so naive.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War