Our Transnational Mercenaries

One of the most, if not the most, destructive wars in European history, the thirty years war, was fought primary with mercenary armies. About 1/3 of the population of German states were decimated by free-lancing armies whose raison d'être was in fact raping and pillaging. This led, basically, to our current system of sovereign nation states, each with its own army, which eventually began to take on the structure of secular theology known as 'nationalism.' While I think overall the case that we are entering into a post-national or trans-national period of globalization is somewhat exaggerated, one interesting case is the phenomena of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. While these contractors are international corporations without ties or obligations to the nation-state from which they originate (like paying taxes...), they are also companies that are through-and-through creations of what one might prosaically call 'real america.'

When the role of these contractors is so great that their profit becomes plausible explanation for the war itself, accusations such as the ones that surfaced against Blackwater (now Xe) this week seem more business as usual than shocking exception. In case you haven't heard, they allege that Blackwater's founder Erik Prince arranged the murder of individuals who were snitching to the feds about the company, and threatened many others with violence. And that the company was involved in illegal trading of illegal weapons. And that they used child prostitutes. And that they had a vision of "christian supremacy" in which "going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game," Iraqis who were more commonly referred to by Blackwater personnel as "ragheads" or "hajiis. Personnel who used "call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades." What no one has mentioned is that Prince, who "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," bears something of a resemblance to Gary Oldman's character from The Fifth Element, the wonderfully titled Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg.



















Anyway, so, ok, maybe that list of transgressions is a little more than business as usual. But, really, if you think that, you should tell one Barack Obama, who continues to pay said company - to the tune of $20 million for August alone - for such vital services as "Air Charter for Things." Things! We must get those things to Afghanistan at once, for how would we wage war without things. Maybe things like banned ammunition that explodes after penetrating the human body. Moreover, it is likely that the 'end' of the war will likely mean a continued US presence, especially in the form of contracted personnel. We might not be there for a million years, but that's only because the US won't be around for a million years. Blackwater, on the other hand, might survive its nation's demise.

If I have a point, it is this: to whom does Blackwater/Xe owe its loyalty? They are a transnational, for-profit, mercenary army fighting a transcendental, religious war. On the other hand they seem to be staffed entirely by Toby Keith's inbred cousins. Are they children of the post-9/11 nationalist hysteria, or transnational profiteers adept at exploiting such hysteria? Would Xe mercenaries switch sides for the right price? That last one is doubtful. I don't think that Blackwater as a transnational company can escape its national roots, but at the same time these roots are in a nation that is silently discordant, a nation whose incongruities and irreducible differences are starting to show. In this context, Blackwater's trancedental war against Iraq and more local operations, say their deployment to New Orleans during Katrina, represent nation-state hegemony gone international, what one might call privatized imperialism.







ps. I'm reasonably sure that tricky is now Erik Prince's assistant as well.