Oh, Blackwater! Another View

With the release of the F.B.I. report on the unprovoked slaughter of 17 Iraqis by private contractor Blackwater, not only this country, but also the rest of the world saw the results of outsourcing security to a private contractor without any oversight. What the rest of the world also saw was that this was an intentional policy. From a November 15, 2007 editorial in Germany's Frankfurter Rundschau:

The set-up is deliberate. For most foreign security companies operating in Iraq, neither Iraqi nor international law applies, since the occupying power would have it this way. That is a many-faceted scandal. But even Washington has come to realize that trigger-happy private mercenaries exempt from any responsibility harms its own cause. But even if the U.S. Congress closes these loopholes, they are just symptomatic of a larger issue.

Yes, the set-up was deliberate. Paul Bremer and his masters made that determination right from the start. That way there could be no interference from any quarter, not Congress, not the UN or The Hague, and especially not the Iraqi Parliament. That it ultimately backfired, as it had to and as the White House had to know it would, is of no consequence to the people who made out like bandits in such a policy. They have their pieces of silver, as do their shareholders.

I know that I'm old, but apparently not wiser, because I just do not get how this has happened to my country, how we lost even the semblance of decency and honesty and fair dealing amongst everything else we have lost. We have even lost a sense of shame when it comes to revelations such as this.

And what really confuses me is that those in whom we have placed our trust by electing them to national office don't seem at all bothered by any of these losses.