Erik Prince founded a now-defunct company, Blackwater, whose very name evokes images of private warriors running amok in Iraq, shooting up the streets and killing civilians with reckless abandon. Prince is the last person who should be advocating for private
Erik Prince founded a now-defunct company, Blackwater, whose very name evokes images of private warriors running amok in Iraq, shooting up the streets and killing civilians with reckless abandon. Prince is the last person who should be advocating for private security forces to take over the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.
But apparently the ideas of Prince and Stephen Feinberg, owner of another private-army company, Dyncorp International, have caught the attention of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Their naivete and inexperience make them sitting ducks for war profiteers such as Prince and Feinberg.
It’s no secret the Afghan war has gone disastrously. The 2001 invasion initially was a big success. U.S. troops quickly swept across the country and routed al-Qaida along with its Taliban hosts. By late 2002, Afghanistan’s U.S.-friendly government was well on its way toward quasi-democratic governance.
That’s when then-President George W. Bush turned his attention to Iraq and used nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” to justify a new U.S.-led invasion. Afghanistan was relegated to back-burner status, opening the door for Taliban forces to regain a footing. Dyncorp and Blackwater contractors stepped in to fill the gap.
America’s military effort never fully recovered. Billions of dollars handed over to Dyncorp and other contractors to train Afghan and Iraqi security forces have produced appallingly bad results. In 2007, Blackwater contractors opened fire on civilians for no discernible reason, leaving 17 Iraqis dead and 20 wounded.
Video footage is available online showing other private soldiers taking pot shots at vehicles and blowing away drivers who got too close to their vehicles.
Withdrawing the U.S. military from Afghanistan would pave the way for the Taliban’s return to power. Al-Qaida, the Islamic State or other terrorist groups would be free to establish new bases of operations.
No private security company has yet presented itself as capable of replacing the U.S. military and providing full accountability to American taxpayers. Private armies are accountable to no one. Security conditions would make it nearly impossible for U.S. government auditors to venture into the zone of operation to gauge and verify a private army’s success and proper expenditure of taxpayer money.
And because of the deadly nature of the work, private armies tend to recruit ex-soldiers from countries with less-than-stellar human rights records such as Serbia and Russia. The prospects for another shoot-’em-up disaster like Baghdad would be high. Handing over authority to private-contracting thugs would only bolster the al-Qaida assertion that America stands for murderous destruction. Who needs it?
A continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is hardly ideal. But against the alternative of likely disaster that would accompany privatizing the war effort, using bona fide U.S. troops is the best among a lot of terrible options.
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch
