Time to shut down Blackwater
With every passing day, the private security firm known as Blackwater increasingly resembles an American version of the Nazi SS, namely a brutal, ideologically-driven private army outside the command and control structure of the regular U.S. Army. They are in Iraq at incredible expense to the U.S. taxpayer to provide security for U.S. State Department personnel. On Sept. 16, they killed 17 Iraqi civilians at an intersection in Baghdad, and the more journalists look into it, the worse it seems.
The latest investigation of the massacre is in today's Washington Post. The New York Times tracked down a former Blackwater mercenary in Seattle who is accused of murdering an Iraqi in a drunken rage, but who was spirited out of Iraq by the State Department and Blackwater. Perhaps Jon Stewart put it best on Comedy Central last night: Blackwater gets paid for killing people.
One of many differences between Blackwater and the SS is that it doesn't appear any Blackwater mercenaries face legal retribution for their alleged crimes. Not that Germany would have prosecuted SS members for their crimes if they hadn't lost the war, but America is supposed to be on a somewhat higher plane than Nazi Germany.
Congress is moving to remove the legal immunity of American private security firms in Iraq, but that probably won't affect the participants in the Sept. 16 massacre or the fellow in Seattle. They and their leaders, possibly including Erik Prince, the Blackwater owner, ought to be turned over to the United Nations for war crimes prosecutions, just as the Serbians were a few years ago. That will be a start toward restoring the image of America in the world. And whatever contracts Blackwater has for work in Iraq or elsewhere for the U.S. government need to be terminated forthwith.
Perhaps it isn't fair to compare Blackwater to the Nazi SS. Blackwater mercenaries don't wear the infamous double lightning bolt insignia. And as far as anyone knows, they don't swear a personal oath of loyalty to George W. Bush. As far as we know.