Oh, Blackwater, Keep on Rollin'
So. The Blackwater Group, the private organization performing military functions on behalf of the U.S. in Iraq, finally stepped over some invisible line between crimes to which everyone turned a blind eye and crimes serious enough to get someone angry enough to decide to start enforcing the law upon even them. Sorta.
Prime Minister al-Maliki isn’t willing to go so far as to try any one for war crimes, or indeed to try anyone for anything at all. He has merely decided to revoke the Blackwater group’s license to operate on Iraqi soil. This should be simple enough for a sovereign state, a government operating with the firm support of the U.S. president. Even Condi Rice got on the phone to apologize for the latest incident, so you know Blackwater has been very, very naughty indeed. But ejecting them isn’t so simple. Apparently, the Blackwater Group, which for years has insisted that it is not answerable to military law because it is not, technically, a military organization, now insists that it is also not answerable to civilian law because it is working with the American military, and, as such, is covered by an American law to the effect that American military personnel in Iraq are not subject to Iraqi law under any circumstances. Blackwater has even argued that, as a private contractor, it is free from Senate inquiry.
The claim echoes Cheney’s insistence that, as president of the Senate, he is not subject to limitations on executive authority, while as Vice President of the U.S., he is entitled to all executive privileges.
One wonders just which laws, if any, the Blackwater Group feels it is subject to. None, clearly, but I want to hear the question put baldly to them, and repeated until a clear answer is received. Sadly, that will never happen: Blackwater is a private organization, and doesn’t have to answer questions put to them by the pesky press. But we could ask any American official who speaks in their defense. Go on: ask. “What laws is Blackwater subject to?” Keep asking. No politician would ever say “none;” that would sound illegal, and dangerously similar to an embarrassing truth.
A few officials might try the dodge of claiming they’re responsible to the executive authority, as part of the general war effort, the execution of which is properly a function of the executive branch. I don’t suspect this is, in fact, true, and that Blackwater would really submit to prosecution if even Bush decided to, but suppose it is. Can such officials go on to defend the idea of a heavily-armed task force subject to no law but the personal decisions of the president himself? Think about this. A large, heavily-armed military body, answerable only to the president, and loyal only to the person of the president, is seven different flavors of scary.
But if they aren’t the president’s personal army, what’s left? They claim not to be answerable to the American military, or to the Iraqi courts, or even to their employers in Congress—who, after all, sign the checks—who, really are they answerable to? Nobody. Nobody at all but their stockholders. And yet they have the gall to insist that no one call them mercenaries. “Mercenaries” has such an ugly, lawless ring to it.