Blackwater still in the news

A roundup of recent stories involving Blackwater, the private military contractor founded by Michigan native and wealthy Republican supporter Erik Prince:

Blackwater spins off inconspicuous subsidiary

Mother Jones reports that Prince has formed a new company, Greystone Limited, which subcontracts for Blackwater and was founded to fulfill many of the same missions with a much lower profile than the Blackwater name. The company is so obscure that even those who follow the field closely and State Department officials who oversee contracts with such firms have never heard of it. This new entity was incorporated in Barbados, a Caribbean country known to be a haven for companies seeking to avoid taxes in their home country. The article suggests that the fact that the company was incorporated overseas “may have been an attempt to skirt strict regulations on the export of military services.”

The article also notes that Greystone is focusing largely on recruiting from foreign militaries rather than the American military, which reflects the firm’s focus on getting international business from foreign governments and corporate interests rather than from the United States, where Blackwater makes some $600 million a year from government contracts. When Prince testified in front of a congressional committee last October in the wake of several scandals involving his company, he proudly declared, “The Oxford dictionary defines a mercenary as a professional soldier working for a foreign government. We have Americans working for America, protecting Americans.”

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Is using private military contractors in wartime justified?

The New Republic has an article by Michael Walzer that asks, “Is there an ethics that justifies Blackwater?” The article looks at arguments laid out in two books, one that is strongly critical of Blackwater and other private military contractors being given roles to play in war (Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”) and one that defends their existence and use (Gerald Schumacher’s “A Bloody Business: America’s War Zone Contractors and the Occupation of Iraq”). The article focuses a great deal on the issue of accountability, something clearly undermined by the use of private soldiers rather than the U.S. military to perform jobs that the military traditionally does. Walzer writes:

Using private soldiers makes policy invisible and so reduces (or eliminates entirely) its political costs. But it is a crucial feature of democratic decision-making that politicians should pay the costs of the decisions they make. They should also get credit for the benefits. And then voters can study the balance sheet.

Even more important, Walzer argues, is accountability for the soldiers themselves. This has been a major criticism of the use of private military contractors in Iraq, where they operate outside the authority of Iraqi law, American law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Despite multiple incidents with such private soldiers that have resulted in the death of dozens of Iraqi civilians, some of them declared to be unjustified by our own government, not a single Blackwater employee has been charged with any crime. Even an incident in which a Blackwater guard allegedly got drunk and killed the bodyguard of the Iraqi vice president has not resulted in any discipline whatsoever. The guard was quickly hustled out of Iraq and fired by Blackwater, but he returned a year later — with a security clearance — with another private military contracting firm.

Prince to speak in Grand Rapids

Blackwater founder Erik Prince is scheduled to speak to the Grand Rapids Economic Club at a luncheon on May 19. Prince was born and raised in west Michigan and inherited his family’s immense fortune from the auto parts business, which he used to found Blackwater and many other related companies. Whether he will take questions from the press or the public is up to him, say organizers of the luncheon. Prince’s sister is Betsy DeVos, wife of recent Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos, and she is on the board of the Grand Rapids Economic Club, which explains why the normally reclusive former Navy SEAL is making this public appearance.

Catch Michigan Messenger’s previous coverage of private military and security companies here at this link.