Good. Maybe if more people start to see the military as just another business they will start to change the way we think about how we use our military. It will be less, "Brave soldiers putting their life on the line for us" and more "People whose job sometimes requires they kill people for the highest bidder."
Dyncorp should be mentioned in the headline too. From what I've been able to gather Dyncorp is still a much larger company than Blackwater and their history of war crimes is more extensive too.
> I think it is a very disconcerting notion that we would allow a private entity to possess the equipment and infrastructure to wage war.
Historically, that's hardly unusual.
> How do we ensure they don't go rogue?
How do we ensure anyone and anything doesn't go rogue? What does "going rogue" even mean in this context? Are you imagining that they might behave worse than officially state backed forces? How is that even possible, given how horrible state backed forces routinely behave?
I'm not trying to be flippant, but I just don't get the distinction you're trying to make. This doesn't seem especially new, or different, or dangerous.
And the US-backed groups variously called paramilitaries, anti-communist insurgents, moderate rebels, etc. are essentially foreign-run PMCs by another name.
>I think it is a very disconcerting notion that we would allow a private entity to possess the equipment and infrastructure to wage war
Why? Do you feel you have any real say in what our public entity does with its equipment and infrastructure to wage war? Those capabilities are already in the hands of the highest bidder.
How is the requirement to obtain the President's authorization a refutation of the premise? Are we pretending that the last four wars this country fought (not to mention the countless police actions and funded regime change) had any point beyond making a handful of wealthy people even wealthier? Are we pretending that the American people at large benefited in any way from any of these actions?
Do you really think the war industry would just roll over while a pacifist won the US presidency? These people don't have the same boundaries as normal humans. The DoD has engaged in probably the most expensive propaganda campaign in history to legitimize their activities, and any anti-war candidate would have to survive this barrage of money against them. And I seriously doubt that using violence, even against a president, is out of the realm of possibility for them. Every US president knows that they will make serious enemies, at home and abroad, if they cancel arms sales to countries like Saudi Arabia.
That's a poor argument for taking warfare out of the hands of democratically elected governments, no matter how aloof you may feel them to be, and putting it in the hands of unaccountable private corporations, who by definition have no mechanism of popular recourse.
How could the private corporation not be accountable to the nations in which it exists? They are building, selling, and training those personnel somewhere. They're still getting their money from the governments. The difference is the disillusionment of the people.
Am I being too obtuse by pointing out that a corporation, by definition, requires the legal framework of a nation to even exist? I'll point out again that these private forces need to have their training facilities somewhere, buy their weapons somewhere, etc.
We have private corporations today manufacturing our nuclear weapons and that has worked out fine without them "going rogue." Historically, private fighting forces are not unique or unusual in any way. So what exactly am I being naive about?
How effective was the democratic process in preventing the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the destruction of Libya, the arming of rebels in Syria, the "inadvertent" loss of humvees and tanks to ISIS, and so on? Is there less terror around the world than when we started the war on terror?
We have 30x the number of bases than the rest of the nations of the world combined!
Our military budget is larger than the next 19 countries, many of whom are allies. Is this also a result of the US population's wishes and hitting the target goals? Perhaps if your paycheck had a list of where your taxes are going, like they do in France, you'd see just how much discretionary spending goes towards the military, and the taxpayers would send a message to Congress that enough is enough.
And the public army faces no market competition, so the Pentagon can't account for $8.7 trillion with a T dollars - yet our politicians always say that our army is always running out of funds and we need to increase our funding to support the national defense.
All of this is an argument for greater accountability and democratic control of our military. It is not an argument for a radical experiment with the free market and military force.
We've tried that, with diminishing returns. Prove to me that more of the same will suddenly give us more accountability.
Politicians always say "we just didn't have enough money, give us more". However the definition of (institutional) insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a better result.
I am not talking about replacing the military with the free market. I am talking about shrinking it. Yes using democratic means. But good luck with that!
I know about Smedley Butler. I've also read Noam Chomsky, and I share his position that a democratic institution, for all of its many faults, is always preferable to a tyrannical, autocratic or authoritarian one.
To read Noam Chomsky, one wonders if that's his position, as he defends communist autocratic regimes far more than capitalist democracies like the USA. Part of his shtick is to criticize his home country the most. But compare his treatment of eg US in Vietnam vs Cambodian genocide. Or the amount of criticism he levels at the USA's activities abroad vs the same amount of the KGB.
In the Israel-Palestine situation he criticizes Democratic Israel far more than, say the Kingdom of Jordan. He criticizes Likud more than the PLO, and writes about the USA's imperialism in supporting a democratic state in the Middle East, while ignoring that during the 50s and 60s the KGB trained the PLO as part of explicit support to undermine Western-backed countries.
I correspond with Chomsky from time to time, and I think he is set in his ways. But I hardly think he would say our democracy has a good track record. You're thinking of Michio Kaku :)
You're mixing topics up in order to muddy the discussion. There's a conversation about power, amplification, human rights, etc at play in both Chomsky's positions and valid criticisms of his positions.
But that doesn't address what we're discussing, it distracts from it.
> In the Israel-Palestine situation he criticizes Democratic Israel far more than, say the Kingdom of Jordan. He criticizes Likud more than the PLO, and writes about the USA's imperialism in supporting a democratic state in the Middle East, while ignoring that during the 50s and 60s the KGB trained the PLO as part of explicit support to undermine Western-backed countries.
And he also often explained why that is, he focuses on his government and their allies, because he is responsible for that, respectively as directly as can be, and by proxy. Criticizing their enemies is kind of masturbation.
Just because it exists historically doesn't mean that it's not a radical idea. Although, if you want historical perspective on how terrible of an idea it is, Machiavelli didn't mince words.
I repeat, then, that of all kinds of troops, auxiliaries are the most dangerous; for the prince or republic that calls them to their assistance has no control or authority whatever over them, as that remains entirely with him who sends them.
...
A prince or republic, then, should adopt any other course rather than bring auxiliaries into their state for its defence, especially when their reliance is wholly upon them; for any treaty or convention with the enemy, however hard the conditions, will be less hard to bear than the danger from auxiliaries.
...
And in truth no more favourable opportunity could be presented to an ambitious prince or republic for seizing a city or province, than to be asked to send troops there to assist in its defence. And therefore any one whose ambition so far misleads him as to call in strangers to aid in his defence, or in an attack upon others, seeks to acquire that which he will not be able to hold, and which after acquiring will be easily taken from him.
I'm sort of stunned at all the people saying "the military is already rogue so it's fine". It feels alarmingly ahistorical - a military the public is unhappy with is bad, but the history of e.g. Rome ought to speak to how vastly much worse military privatization can become.
> I think it is a very disconcerting notion that we would allow a private entity to possess the equipment and infrastructure to wage war.
what if we take this to extreme, and have everyone be capable of waging war? That is, take the right to bear arms to the extreme where you cannot go to war with anyone, because it would be Mutually Assured Destruction.
I'd take a position between you two. I personally don't see the problem with a military force being operated as a private business. The state still has the monopoly on approving the use of force, and they are no more and no less protected from a force "going rogue", when you think about it.
I don't think the private, for-profit operation of a unit or facility of a military is inherently flawed in any distinct way. The onus is on the government to draft and enforce the contracts appropriately, and make sure they retain control over the force.
Ultimately, war is in the hands of the armed; not governments, not corporations. The governments and corporations which organize armed men are responsible for setting up the correct incentive structures to achieve the goals, with as few mistakes as possible.
Is international law what stops Russia from annexing Alaska?
Conversely, how well is international law working for the residents of eastern Ukraine?
Although I wish it were otherwise, when I look around the world, I see a system governed by force, not laws. Private military forces fit tidily into this system.
There is to a point a framework of laws that at least provide some semblance of order and redress. Treaties, frameworks, alliances.
Now obviously force in the moment is what decides everything but the decisions that may lead to that moment or away from it are at least possible with the international framework of relations.
> Is international law what stops Russia from annexing Alaska?
So when someone told you a loved one of yours was murdered by some private contractor or soldier, expecting some kind of reaction out of you, that would be yours? Just a shrug? That's how the world is, and that's that?
Of course not, and nothing in my response could reasonably be understood to suggest that. Your comment is absurd.
My argument is that there's no real difference between the two: The exact same force prevent both from occurring. (And, should it occur, it would be just as terrible, of course.)
The comment I replied to was discussing how to hold people responsible, and suggesting (in my view, incorrectly) that international law is of more use against state actors than non-state actors.
So what would your reaction be? Because that kind of was part of the question, which in turn was asked in response to shrugging away a "job" that means you "have to" "kill people for the highest bidder". Normalizing that results in consequences that are not just terrible, but also quite predictable, and "prevent from occuring" is a kind of weird thing to say in this context, to put it mildly. How would that work? On what planet does it work, according to your phrasing where some force is preventing it -- rather than that it should prevent it, ideally? Just one example:
> On September 24, 2007, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior announced it would file criminal charges against the Blackwater staff involved in the shooting, although it is unclear how some of them will be brought to trial.
and
> US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified before Congress that the Pentagon has sufficient legal authority to control its contractors, but that commanders lack sufficient "means and resources" to exercise adequate oversight.
but hey, at least:
> In 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. The other four went to trial in 2014.[5] The jury found Slatten guilty of first-degree murder, and the other three guards (Slough, Liberty and Heard) guilty of at least three counts of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to commit a violent crime. Jurors sided with prosecutors' contention that the shooting was a criminal act, not a battlefield encounter gone wrong. Slatten faced a potential sentence of life in prison. The other three guards faced decades in prison; the weapons charges carried a minimum 30-year sentence under a law enacted during the 1990s cocaine epidemic.
But still, what was prevented? Blackwater changed the name, fantastic. But really, there is so much more, again just one:
> On February 16, 2005, four Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. State Department convoy in Iraq fired 70 rounds into a car. The guards stated that they felt threatened when the driver ignored orders to stop as he approached the convoy. The fate of the car's driver was unknown because the convoy did not stop after the shooting. An investigation by the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service concluded that the shooting was not justified and that the Blackwater employees provided false statements to investigators. The statements claimed that one of the Blackwater vehicles had been hit by insurgent gunfire, but the investigation concluded that one of the Blackwater guards had actually fired into his own vehicle by accident. John Frese, the U.S. embassy in Iraq's top security official, declined to punish Blackwater or the security guards because he believed any disciplinary actions would lower the morale of the Blackwater contractors.
Dear God. I'm kind of speechless, actually. I expected to find some shit, but still wow. Compassion with the aggressors, not even a THOUGHT for the victims. And make sure to not be abrasive and actually expect people to imagine the consequences of what they accept on them. Yes, there is already a lot of crap in the world, but that doesn't excuse more of it.
If it makes sense to contract it out to lowest bid, it makes sense for the companies to cut corners. Capitalism is as capitalism does. Why does this need spelling out? If someone accepts this being done to third parties in the third world, they wouldn't stop it being done to me, even if they're not even able to admit that to themselves, it's useless to attempt to insult my intelligence. I don't kno...
> "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.
Is there? In theory yes, but in practice does this happen? I really really want to say there should be but I don't know I could sell that story and completely believe it myself.
Economics plays a huge part in politics and a country's interest sure but military decisions are accountable to elected public officials. Businesses are accountable to share holders.
I believe that hero worship of military personnel is what allows so many crimes against humanity to be overlooked. Getting rid of that seems like it might at least let us put torturers behind bars.
Are you aware of who Erik Prince and Stephen Feinberg are? You are essentially advocating for even more death and misery abroad in the short term, in the hope that the public's stance on the US military will change. It won't change anyway though, the opposite would happen -- allowing Blackwater and Dyncorp to do what they do (murder, human trafficking, torture, etc.) will accelerate chaos in the Middle East and globally, and you'll end up with even more Americans throwing themselves behind the war machine.
Well, apparently nobody gets the blame. Or, more accurately, the court system overturns the convictions of mercenaries who slaughter dozens of civilians:
it should be the paying entities that takes the responsibility. The mercs themselves don't (and arguably shouldn't) take any liability when they are ordered to kill anyone.
Wow, I'm shocked that I didn't even realize the US was still 'at war' in Afghanistan. Now I'm looking at the Wikipedia page and reading that "[t]he War in Afghanistan is the longest war in United States history" [1].
How embarrassing :( I wonder how many Americans are un/aware of this.
A lot probably. The US population seems to be totally unaware of what their military is really doing.
The whole thing is obfuscated in a web of foreign governments, three-letter agencies, contractors and tech giants, endless acronyms and euphemisms (e.g. 'disposition matrix', 'extraordinary rendition', 'enhanced interrogation techniques', 'collateral damage'), and as others in this thread have said, a lot of it is about creating distance from culpability. Barack Obama was a remarkably adept and slick PR guy, possessing the perfect confluence of personal attributes to make Americans not care about whatever their government was doing. But now Trump is letting the cat out of the bag! It's a dangerous course of events but maybe has more opportunity for creating lasting change if people unite against him.
They have a Youtube channel with all their videos up. The name pre-dates the "real" vs. "fake news" thing. It's a rare example of American journalists speaking candidly about the US war & arms industry. They have other content too, along the lines of Democracy Now but with less focus on social justice issues, but I know that the CEO / editor Paul Jay believes that US war profiteering is presently the main existential threat to humankind:
It just shows we have learned nothing from Iran-Contra.
The decision of the International Court of Justice in June 1986 condemning the United States for the “unlawful use of force” and illegal economic warfare was dismissed as an irrelevant pronouncement by a “hostile forum” (New York Times).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States
War profiteering is a rent-seeking activity. It's public fraud. And its adherents are aristocratic. They believe they're better than others, murder is completely ethical and available for a price, which is its only inhibitor. Thing is, when this class get out of control, their fellow little primates, who happen to be the vast majority, can go ape shit and build things like guillotines. Yes, there were so many victims that needed execution the streets ran with blood for days. They'd obviously let them accumulate unchecked for far too long. Oh well.
65 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadThere are significant implications to what you suggest beyond just the mere possibility of the potential benefit you claim.
I think it is a very disconcerting notion that we would allow a private entity to possess the equipment and infrastructure to wage war.
How do we ensure they don't go rogue?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp#Controversies
Edit: A good documentary to check out about military contractors in Iraq is Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q8y-4nZP6o
Historically, that's hardly unusual.
> How do we ensure they don't go rogue?
How do we ensure anyone and anything doesn't go rogue? What does "going rogue" even mean in this context? Are you imagining that they might behave worse than officially state backed forces? How is that even possible, given how horrible state backed forces routinely behave?
I'm not trying to be flippant, but I just don't get the distinction you're trying to make. This doesn't seem especially new, or different, or dangerous.
And the US-backed groups variously called paramilitaries, anti-communist insurgents, moderate rebels, etc. are essentially foreign-run PMCs by another name.
Why? Do you feel you have any real say in what our public entity does with its equipment and infrastructure to wage war? Those capabilities are already in the hands of the highest bidder.
>How do we ensure they don't go rogue?
The public entity is already rogue.
We have 30x the number of bases than the rest of the nations of the world combined!
Our military budget is larger than the next 19 countries, many of whom are allies. Is this also a result of the US population's wishes and hitting the target goals? Perhaps if your paycheck had a list of where your taxes are going, like they do in France, you'd see just how much discretionary spending goes towards the military, and the taxpayers would send a message to Congress that enough is enough.
And the public army faces no market competition, so the Pentagon can't account for $8.7 trillion with a T dollars - yet our politicians always say that our army is always running out of funds and we need to increase our funding to support the national defense.
Politicians always say "we just didn't have enough money, give us more". However the definition of (institutional) insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a better result.
I am not talking about replacing the military with the free market. I am talking about shrinking it. Yes using democratic means. But good luck with that!
More people should read Smedley Butler.
https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
In the Israel-Palestine situation he criticizes Democratic Israel far more than, say the Kingdom of Jordan. He criticizes Likud more than the PLO, and writes about the USA's imperialism in supporting a democratic state in the Middle East, while ignoring that during the 50s and 60s the KGB trained the PLO as part of explicit support to undermine Western-backed countries.
I correspond with Chomsky from time to time, and I think he is set in his ways. But I hardly think he would say our democracy has a good track record. You're thinking of Michio Kaku :)
But that doesn't address what we're discussing, it distracts from it.
And he also often explained why that is, he focuses on his government and their allies, because he is responsible for that, respectively as directly as can be, and by proxy. Criticizing their enemies is kind of masturbation.
Historically the concept of private fighting forces is not in any way radical.
I repeat, then, that of all kinds of troops, auxiliaries are the most dangerous; for the prince or republic that calls them to their assistance has no control or authority whatever over them, as that remains entirely with him who sends them. ... A prince or republic, then, should adopt any other course rather than bring auxiliaries into their state for its defence, especially when their reliance is wholly upon them; for any treaty or convention with the enemy, however hard the conditions, will be less hard to bear than the danger from auxiliaries. ... And in truth no more favourable opportunity could be presented to an ambitious prince or republic for seizing a city or province, than to be asked to send troops there to assist in its defence. And therefore any one whose ambition so far misleads him as to call in strangers to aid in his defence, or in an attack upon others, seeks to acquire that which he will not be able to hold, and which after acquiring will be easily taken from him.
Truly depraved criminal actions by personnel in the employ of his merc company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisour_Square_massacre
what if we take this to extreme, and have everyone be capable of waging war? That is, take the right to bear arms to the extreme where you cannot go to war with anyone, because it would be Mutually Assured Destruction.
I don't think the private, for-profit operation of a unit or facility of a military is inherently flawed in any distinct way. The onus is on the government to draft and enforce the contracts appropriately, and make sure they retain control over the force.
Ultimately, war is in the hands of the armed; not governments, not corporations. The governments and corporations which organize armed men are responsible for setting up the correct incentive structures to achieve the goals, with as few mistakes as possible.
At least with nation states there's some feeble international law.
Conversely, how well is international law working for the residents of eastern Ukraine?
Although I wish it were otherwise, when I look around the world, I see a system governed by force, not laws. Private military forces fit tidily into this system.
Now obviously force in the moment is what decides everything but the decisions that may lead to that moment or away from it are at least possible with the international framework of relations.
So when someone told you a loved one of yours was murdered by some private contractor or soldier, expecting some kind of reaction out of you, that would be yours? Just a shrug? That's how the world is, and that's that?
My argument is that there's no real difference between the two: The exact same force prevent both from occurring. (And, should it occur, it would be just as terrible, of course.)
The comment I replied to was discussing how to hold people responsible, and suggesting (in my view, incorrectly) that international law is of more use against state actors than non-state actors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisour_Square_massacre
And here are some quotes:
> On September 24, 2007, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior announced it would file criminal charges against the Blackwater staff involved in the shooting, although it is unclear how some of them will be brought to trial.
and
> US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified before Congress that the Pentagon has sufficient legal authority to control its contractors, but that commanders lack sufficient "means and resources" to exercise adequate oversight.
but hey, at least:
> In 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. The other four went to trial in 2014.[5] The jury found Slatten guilty of first-degree murder, and the other three guards (Slough, Liberty and Heard) guilty of at least three counts of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to commit a violent crime. Jurors sided with prosecutors' contention that the shooting was a criminal act, not a battlefield encounter gone wrong. Slatten faced a potential sentence of life in prison. The other three guards faced decades in prison; the weapons charges carried a minimum 30-year sentence under a law enacted during the 1990s cocaine epidemic.
But still, what was prevented? Blackwater changed the name, fantastic. But really, there is so much more, again just one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi#Incidents
> On February 16, 2005, four Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. State Department convoy in Iraq fired 70 rounds into a car. The guards stated that they felt threatened when the driver ignored orders to stop as he approached the convoy. The fate of the car's driver was unknown because the convoy did not stop after the shooting. An investigation by the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service concluded that the shooting was not justified and that the Blackwater employees provided false statements to investigators. The statements claimed that one of the Blackwater vehicles had been hit by insurgent gunfire, but the investigation concluded that one of the Blackwater guards had actually fired into his own vehicle by accident. John Frese, the U.S. embassy in Iraq's top security official, declined to punish Blackwater or the security guards because he believed any disciplinary actions would lower the morale of the Blackwater contractors.
Dear God. I'm kind of speechless, actually. I expected to find some shit, but still wow. Compassion with the aggressors, not even a THOUGHT for the victims. And make sure to not be abrasive and actually expect people to imagine the consequences of what they accept on them. Yes, there is already a lot of crap in the world, but that doesn't excuse more of it.
If it makes sense to contract it out to lowest bid, it makes sense for the companies to cut corners. Capitalism is as capitalism does. Why does this need spelling out? If someone accepts this being done to third parties in the third world, they wouldn't stop it being done to me, even if they're not even able to admit that to themselves, it's useless to attempt to insult my intelligence. I don't kno...
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
if something 'goes wrong' who gets the blame?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/murder-co...
How embarrassing :( I wonder how many Americans are un/aware of this.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
The whole thing is obfuscated in a web of foreign governments, three-letter agencies, contractors and tech giants, endless acronyms and euphemisms (e.g. 'disposition matrix', 'extraordinary rendition', 'enhanced interrogation techniques', 'collateral damage'), and as others in this thread have said, a lot of it is about creating distance from culpability. Barack Obama was a remarkably adept and slick PR guy, possessing the perfect confluence of personal attributes to make Americans not care about whatever their government was doing. But now Trump is letting the cat out of the bag! It's a dangerous course of events but maybe has more opportunity for creating lasting change if people unite against him.
Can I suggest this news network?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_News
They have a Youtube channel with all their videos up. The name pre-dates the "real" vs. "fake news" thing. It's a rare example of American journalists speaking candidly about the US war & arms industry. They have other content too, along the lines of Democracy Now but with less focus on social justice issues, but I know that the CEO / editor Paul Jay believes that US war profiteering is presently the main existential threat to humankind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAEF0iToJ5Y&t=747s
The decision of the International Court of Justice in June 1986 condemning the United States for the “unlawful use of force” and illegal economic warfare was dismissed as an irrelevant pronouncement by a “hostile forum” (New York Times). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States
War profiteering is a rent-seeking activity. It's public fraud. And its adherents are aristocratic. They believe they're better than others, murder is completely ethical and available for a price, which is its only inhibitor. Thing is, when this class get out of control, their fellow little primates, who happen to be the vast majority, can go ape shit and build things like guillotines. Yes, there were so many victims that needed execution the streets ran with blood for days. They'd obviously let them accumulate unchecked for far too long. Oh well.