Letter from Lhasa, number
172. (Simons 2009): Master of War
by
Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
Simons, S., Master of War. Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince
and the Business of War, HarperCollins,
New York, NY, USA, 2009.
(Simons 2009).
Suzanne Simons
“(...) Prince
had relied on persistence and determination to grow Blackwater from little more than a training
facility for military Special Operations and law enforcement personnel into a
billion-dollar powerhouse, with the U.S. government as his largest client. The
company had provided an ever-expanding list of services that included personal protection
of U.S. diplomats in Iraq, security services at fixed locations for some of the
CIA’s most sensitive sites around the world, and airlift support for the
Department of Defense in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Blackwater
designed and built its own weapons and aircraft, and purchases many, many more.
It has a massive Rolodex of some forty thousand former military and law
enforcement personnel as its beck and call. Prince built a private spy service.
It operated in over a dozen countries. And it is all owned entirely by its
founder Erik Prince.”
(Simons 2009, p. 3-4)
Overall, one
needs connections, political and military connections, in this kind of
businesses. One needs long-term planning, with consequent long-term
investments. War must be invented. One needs a condition of permanent war, as
normality. Differently one may just organize a normal security and bodyguards’
company, not an army with the U.S. government as its main client. The military
needs a condition of at least latent war. Contractors are part of the system
need a condition of at least latent war. Police and security services need
crimes. Soldiers need wars. They must be invented. Differently they remain
unemployed. They must be disbanded.
“In just
ten years, Prince had gone from small business owner to major Washington
powerhouse.”
(Simons 2009, p. 5)
These kinds
of books are brainwashing operations. Somebody pay for them. Somebody takes
care they’ll be sold. Anyway, it is costly to produce them.
“Over the
course of eighteen months, during which be granted more than one hundred hours
of interviews and access to Blackwater’s top offices and facilities around the
world, he gave me the chance to find out.”
(Simons 2009, p. 5)
...to find
out who Price were.
“He
controlled a private army hat could single-handedly win many small wars, Is he
a business genius? A war profiteer? The lucky recipient of a government shell
game? What makes him tick?”
(Simons 2009, p. 5)
Voilà, the
image of a godfather, but on a mega-scale and with previous and permanent
impunity from “the government”! Small godfathers are heads of government’s
parallel militias, who are liquidated just not any more useful or just other
ones are more useful. This is a mega-scale godfather, de facto part of “the government”, a parallel militia formally and
publicly hired from “the government”.
If you read
critically pages 11-12, the actual image of Erik Prince is of an easily
conditionable conformist or,
simply, the author represented him in that way for making him nice to the
reader. The author wanted to make him heroic. The actual image is of an idiot,
although a brilliant entrepreneur. Perhaps, he is better, considerably better
than his representation in these first pages of (Simons 2009). However,
he resulted to me as said, when reading this early (Simons 2009).
The
immediate progression of the book is really the representation of the perfect
godfather. Erik Prince comes from a very religious family. Or, at least, such
is his representation in (Simons 2009). ...“Conservative
Christians”, real Republicans of the Bush era! In practice, they are corrupted,
degenerate and criminal people but attending Church services and giving generous
contributions to those congregations.
Full of
skills. Attracted from discipline. More than simply attracted. (Simons 2009, p. 16). Repressed more than really disciplined, perhaps. Wanting
to be possessed, perhaps. Very determined, anyway. Not a genius, perhaps (if
one assumes geniuses as creative and, at least in part, undisciplined) but very
determined as a U.S. para-government entrepreneur must be.
Left the
Navy, he wanted to come back to it, while he became concretely interested in
“world politics”, actually in the Iraqi odd war of Bush father, through some
internship by the White House. Etc. Etc.
Perhaps, he
understood that war is just business and, so, real winners are only war
profiteers.
He was
successful in rejoining the Navy.
“Erik retired
as a Navy SEAL and launched himself into a startup business that would allow
him to spend more time at home: he would focus on providing the training
facilities he had wanted during his SEAL career.”
(Simons 2009, p. 44)
“The
Pentagon had spent more than a decade downsizing its force; the reality was
that the war machine just wasn’t as big as it had once been.”
(Simons 2009, p. 69)
The use of
contractors, for a State/government as well as for a company, is a question
either of corruption or of flexibility or of both. One may not or cannot hire,
or rapidly hire, soldiers, but one has the budget for hiring their services
through a private company. War becomes bureaucratised. One cannot rapidly hire and
dismiss soldiers but one can hire the same services through a private company.
Perhaps a private company can rapidly hire soldiers. However, it is probable
that real contracts with government do not contemplate overnight dismissals.
There is always some middle term planning, in contemporary war. Pentagon is a
big bureaucracy. It may invent and it invents duties. Politicians, Presidents,
are not really free to decide according to “national interests”. Inside
“national interest” there is the power of the militarist bloc, which has a
corporative inters in a condition of permanent war, low-level war with not too
many combats and losses but with weaponry’s consumption. Also soldier’s
consumption may be a good business, if soldiers need silent cares in the
homeland or abroad and if they die silently at home.
The use of
contractors is also a way for hiding the quantity of soldiers actually sent
abroad and their losses. Contractors are not news as government soldiers are. From
the point of view of their political or lobbying power over government, the sum
of the galaxy of contractors, tightly connected with government armed forces,
plus the same government military is not weaker than if there was only a bigger
government military. In practice, also contractors may not be rapidly dismissed
because a President suddenly decides not to go on with foreign interventions.
Eventually, a President is removed or took over as it happened with the
Kennedys or by the 11 September 2001 coup d’État.
Blackwater
business was not affected from inevitable crises, as Fallujah and other ones.
Such incidents happen to normal armies. They inevitably happen to mercenaries.
Ah, they do not like the term “mercenary” They are paid $600 a day. They have a
contract. Mercenaries have contracts. Nowadays they prefer to be called
contractors. Also prostitutes like to be called professionals or escorts or
professional escorts. When one works, the name of the position or profession is
not very important. Evidently, many people think it is. Whatever work is what
it is.
The same
problems there are with government military, there are with mercenaries:
“Critics
continued to worry about the lack of accountability for the private contracting
industry, and for Blackwater in particular. Few critics paid much attention to
Greystone and the other foreign affiliates – where the potential for abuse was
perhaps much greater. Hiring foreign nationals, and working for foreign
governments, let alone private corporations, gave Prince’s companies a lot of
latitude. Contractors can be fired, of course, but there is often not much other
recourse for misbehavior.”
(Simons 2009, p. 126)
April 2006:
“”We’re
trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the postal
service,” said Prince. “They did many of the same services better, faster, and cheaper.””
(Simons 2009, p. 143)
As normal
in whatever entrepreneurial or other client-dependant activity:
“”Make
yourself indispensable to the client,” he had said, “and you’ll always have
work.””
(Simons 2009, p. )
In the May
2008 evaluation of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the convenience
of contractors was in their flexibility, so in less costs when the work they
provided was not any more necessary:
“”The costs
of a private security contract are comparable with those of a U.S. military
unit performing similar functions,” according to the report. “During peacetime
however, the private security contract would not have to be renewed, whereas
the military unit would remain in the force structure.” In other words, there
was no saving during wartime, but “demobilization” was a lot faster with
contractors: the government could shut down its contracts quickly.”
(Simons 2009, p. 255-256)
With the
new U.S. administration, now again Democrat, the Iraqi contract with the State
Department was not any more renewed. “Blackwater lost the most lucrative contract it ever had.”
(Simons 2009, p. 264)
The name of
the company was changed in Xe and the two main exponents of Blackwater, one
stepped down and the other retired. “With both Prince and Jacson stepping down,
the Blackwater era was over.” (Simons 2009, p. 265)
Blackwater
was inside the Republicans area. Clearly, Democrats had to promote contractors
of their area. If the State Department needed contractors, it will have
continued and will continue to need contractors until the U.S.A. will be in
Iraq and in the area. They have hired contractors of other companies. Probably,
the same exceeding Blackwater’s contractors will have move to other companies.
Interesting
that, despite Democrats-Obama demagogy, contractors increased, perhaps only in
some areas of the world [although, even in Iraq, with the withdraw of the
“combat units”, the need of contractors immediately suddenly increased], with
the Obama administration:
“Yet as president, Obama has increased the use
of contractors in Afghanistan at an alarming rate -- from June to September
2009, the number of private security contractors doubled. And the total number
of contractors may reach 160,000, far surpassing the 100,000 troops that will
be in the country even after the surge is completed.
“And wasteful spending on
Pentagon contracts in Afghanistan has climbed to almost $1 billion, which
represents about 16% of the total contract dollars examined by federal
auditors.”
Xe,
ex-Blackwater, is going on in its other activities. The lost of a relevant
contract, as the Iraqi one, is not the end of a high flexible company
The new
company chose evidently a low profile course. If one checks www.blackwaterusa.com , one is
redirected to the training centre. If one checks http://www.xecompany.com , one finds an
“under construction” site. By search engines, one will find a Blackwater shop, http://proshop.blackwaterusa.com .
It is not
astonishing that Erik Prince, while leading Blackwater, was, it seems,
at the same time, a CIA spy:
“Adam Ciralsky's Vanity Fair profile of Erik Prince,
the founder of Blackwater ("a company dogged by a grand-jury
investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of
five ex-employees") reveals that Prince was a spy for the CIA while he was
at the same time raking in over a billion dollars as a government contractor in
the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”
It is
normal. USA, UK and the other States are totalitarian entities. They “trust”
one only if one is one of them, alias
rubbish working for their Secret Police Bureaux and ready to commit whatever
insanity and crime under the cover of the State secret and of the State
impunity for its criminal and insane louses.
Simons, S., Master of War. Blackwater USA’s Erik Prince
and the Business of War, HarperCollins,
New York, NY, USA, 2009.
