August 25, 2009--Also Too Big to Fail
I’m getting confused.
Not just by the Obama administration’s mixed signals about how they want to reform healthcare—is, for example, a public option essential or is it, to quote the president, just a small part, only a “sliver” of the larger plan. I am also not just confused about what they are up to in Afghanistan though I heard at first that we needed to double the number of troops on the ground there to get the job done but then learned this past week, as is being requested by our military leaders, that we may need to do more escalating. I use that word, escalating, advisedly because this also is part of my confusion—for a president supposedly steeped in history doesn’t this begin to sound a little too uncomfortably like the kinds of things we heard back in the 1960s and 70s, about what we needed to do to “win” in Vietnam?
And I am not just confused by the fact that on the one hand the president is allowing his attorney general to begin an investigation of potential CIA abuse of detainees held overseas while almost simultaneously announcing that they will continue Bush-era practices and still have detainees interrogated overseas. Oh, yes, sorry, as long as they are not tortured. But, in my confusion, I can’t square these two things--if we are not going to torture them, sorry—use ”advanced interrogation techniques,” why can’t that be done right here in the US of A?
No, what is really confusing me is why we are continuing to use Blackwater, sorry again—they have renamed themselves as Xe Services, to do all sorts of dirty work for us around the world.
You remember Blackwater? The people who helped carry out that overseas torture; provided heavily-armed security for US personal in our various war zones; and in too many instances served as versions of mercenaries, taking part in quasi-warfare activities for pay such as loading missiles onto Predator drones in Pakistan. All in large part because our military is so overstretched and undermanned that we have had to hire Blackwater types—via multi-billion dollar contracts—to do a lot of our overt and covert work.
The reason they felt the need to change their name from Blackwater to the very post-modern, very cool Xe (pronounced zee) is because of various atrocities they took part in in Iraq for which some of their operatives are now being prosecuted.
So, in a non-confusing new political world, one would expect that the very Obama administration which is closing, sort of, Gitmo; not torturing detainees, sort of, overseas; and not escalating, sort of, in Afghanistan, that they would tear up all their Blackwater-Xe contracts and do their own dirty work. Not so according to a front-page story in Saturday’s New York Times. Read it linked blow and weep.
While putting some of their rogue operatives on trial for the out-and-out murder of Iraqi civilians and then trying to cover it up, the Obama administration continues to give Xe lucrative, no-bid contracts that add up to $400 million to fly State Department staff around Iraq, guard them in Afghanistan, and train security forces in anti-terrorism tactics at its camp in North Carolina. And the CIA, at additional expense, continues to use them to collect intelligence overseas; deal with foreign spies; and take part in covert, black-bag operations.
All because the State Department and the CIA, among others, do not have the capacity to do all their own assignments. Thus we are witnessing another too-big-to-fail situation. Sound familiar? Just as we used trillions of taxpayer dollars to bail out economic giants such as AIG and Citibank, claiming that if they were allowed to implode that that would bring about the collapse of the world’s economies—they were that big—we are now hearing that Xe is also too big to fail. If we cut them loose, it is claimed, who would do what they get paid to do and wouldn’t that undermine a lot of what we are trying to achieve in a world still threatened by terrorists?
Good question. Here’s a possible good answer--maybe stop hiring them to do this work. It would then require us to fess up to what needs to be done to make us safe while also not undermining what it means for us to remain a democracy.
Not just by the Obama administration’s mixed signals about how they want to reform healthcare—is, for example, a public option essential or is it, to quote the president, just a small part, only a “sliver” of the larger plan. I am also not just confused about what they are up to in Afghanistan though I heard at first that we needed to double the number of troops on the ground there to get the job done but then learned this past week, as is being requested by our military leaders, that we may need to do more escalating. I use that word, escalating, advisedly because this also is part of my confusion—for a president supposedly steeped in history doesn’t this begin to sound a little too uncomfortably like the kinds of things we heard back in the 1960s and 70s, about what we needed to do to “win” in Vietnam?
And I am not just confused by the fact that on the one hand the president is allowing his attorney general to begin an investigation of potential CIA abuse of detainees held overseas while almost simultaneously announcing that they will continue Bush-era practices and still have detainees interrogated overseas. Oh, yes, sorry, as long as they are not tortured. But, in my confusion, I can’t square these two things--if we are not going to torture them, sorry—use ”advanced interrogation techniques,” why can’t that be done right here in the US of A?
No, what is really confusing me is why we are continuing to use Blackwater, sorry again—they have renamed themselves as Xe Services, to do all sorts of dirty work for us around the world.
You remember Blackwater? The people who helped carry out that overseas torture; provided heavily-armed security for US personal in our various war zones; and in too many instances served as versions of mercenaries, taking part in quasi-warfare activities for pay such as loading missiles onto Predator drones in Pakistan. All in large part because our military is so overstretched and undermanned that we have had to hire Blackwater types—via multi-billion dollar contracts—to do a lot of our overt and covert work.
The reason they felt the need to change their name from Blackwater to the very post-modern, very cool Xe (pronounced zee) is because of various atrocities they took part in in Iraq for which some of their operatives are now being prosecuted.
So, in a non-confusing new political world, one would expect that the very Obama administration which is closing, sort of, Gitmo; not torturing detainees, sort of, overseas; and not escalating, sort of, in Afghanistan, that they would tear up all their Blackwater-Xe contracts and do their own dirty work. Not so according to a front-page story in Saturday’s New York Times. Read it linked blow and weep.
While putting some of their rogue operatives on trial for the out-and-out murder of Iraqi civilians and then trying to cover it up, the Obama administration continues to give Xe lucrative, no-bid contracts that add up to $400 million to fly State Department staff around Iraq, guard them in Afghanistan, and train security forces in anti-terrorism tactics at its camp in North Carolina. And the CIA, at additional expense, continues to use them to collect intelligence overseas; deal with foreign spies; and take part in covert, black-bag operations.
All because the State Department and the CIA, among others, do not have the capacity to do all their own assignments. Thus we are witnessing another too-big-to-fail situation. Sound familiar? Just as we used trillions of taxpayer dollars to bail out economic giants such as AIG and Citibank, claiming that if they were allowed to implode that that would bring about the collapse of the world’s economies—they were that big—we are now hearing that Xe is also too big to fail. If we cut them loose, it is claimed, who would do what they get paid to do and wouldn’t that undermine a lot of what we are trying to achieve in a world still threatened by terrorists?
Good question. Here’s a possible good answer--maybe stop hiring them to do this work. It would then require us to fess up to what needs to be done to make us safe while also not undermining what it means for us to remain a democracy.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:49 AM
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