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Despite
the high-level political connections of the mercenary organization
Blackwater, the scandals about its recklessness and ruthlessness in
Iraq are expanding. And they are increasingly being reinforced by new
scandals about other big corporations’ undermining the U.S. occupation
by unrestrained pursuit of private profit.
The
latest are the revelations about Dyncorps, the company entrusted with
the training of the Iraqi police, one of the Iraqi security forces that
are supposed ultimately to
achieve the U.S. aims in Iraq and allow the scaling down of the U.S.
military operation.
The
BBC website reported Oct. 23: "The US government audit, due to be
released in Washington, says the State Department cannot say
'specifically what it received' for most of the money paid to DynCorp,
the largest single contractor to the department."
Even
the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, nominally a
Democrat but an ardent supporter of Bush's policy in Iraq, expressed
uneasiness. The BBC noted:
"Senator
Joe Lieberman ... said it could take the State Department up to five
years to review invoices and demand repayment from DynCorp for
unjustified expenses. 'This scenario is far too frequent across the
federal government,' he said."
These
multiplying scandals and the chaos they reflect are evidence that the
capitalist counteroffensive against all the social gains of the last
150 years has reached the point where it is undermining the general
policy goals of the capitalist class as a whole.
The
"economic royalists" have pushed "privatization" to
the point of reviving evils characteristic of the first phase of
capitalist development, in which the basic needs of social cohesion,
vital even for the capitalist economy, were ignored. For the
privatizers, there is no such thing as society—only the market.
The
result is that the socially blind pursuit of profit by the monster
corporations is threatening the political goals of the capitalist class
as a whole. In fact, this was
the same problem that motivated the capitalist rulers to enact the
first progressive social legislation in England. It was not because of
the pressure of any movement representing the masses—the victims of the
savage early capitalism—but the capitalists themselves, who feared that
they were destroying the base of their economic development.
This
lesson has apparently been forgotten by the ideologues singing the war
songs of the capitalist offensive. Their actions are symptomatic of a
decadent capitalist class that stubbornly ignores that interests of society
and gives no thought to the future.
And
the obvious implication of it is that the defeat of the U.S. effort in
Iraq will be a disaster for the entire worldwide capitalist offensive
that has been going on for the last 30 years, and one that is not limited
to the capitalist powers that committed themselves to the Iraq war and
occupation.
Reporting
on a congressional investigation of Blackwater's operations in Iraq, an
article in the Oct. 2 New York Times noted that the company had tried
to cover its outrages by paying off the victim's families, a
capitalist-type calculation that left out the social aspect: "In
at least two cases, Blackwater paid victims’ family members who
complained, and sought to cover up other episodes, the Congressional report
said. It said State Department officials approved the payments in the
hope of keeping the shootings quiet.
“In
one case last year, the department helped Blackwater spirit an employee
out of Iraq less than 36 hours after the employee, while drunk, killed
a bodyguard for one of Iraq’s two vice presidents on Christmas
Eve."
After
the Blackwater massacre in Nissour Square, Baghdad, on Sept. 16, the
U.S. government itself took the lead in trying to pay off the victims'
families and supporters, but seems to have succeeded only in
embittering them, according to an account in the Oct.
25
Christian Science Monitor: "Mohammed Hafidh says he refused to
accept an envelope filled with $12,500 in cash from Patricia Butenis,
deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Baghdad, as compensation
for the death of his 10-year-old son, Ali.
"'I
told her that I want the courts to have their say,' says Mr. Hafidh,
whose son was among 17 Iraqi civilians killed in a Sept. 16 shooting
involving Blackwater USA security guards. ....
“Haythem
al-Rubaie, who lost his son and wife in the same shooting, says he
won't even meet with Ms. Butenis, who offered cash compensation on
Wednesday to seven of the victims' families, including Hafidh.”
Blackwater
even put profit ahead of the security of its mercenary soldiers. 'The
Sept. 28 Washington Post summarized a report by the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform. It began by noting:
"The
private security firm Blackwater USA brushed aside warnings from
another security firm and focused on cost, not safety, before it sent
its personnel to escort trucks to Fallujah in 2004, resulting in four
American deaths that marked a major turning point in the war. ..."
The
article continued: "For example, the assessment said that
Blackwater, then operating under a Defense Department contract, was
supposed to use vehicles with armored protection kits, but as of the
date of the killings, no such vehicles had been obtained. A Blackwater
internal report obtained by the committee quoted an employee who said
the contract ’paid for armor vehicles’ but that ’management in North
Carolina … made the decision to go with soft skin due to cost.’
“The
report disclosed that another complicating factor was a contract
dispute with a different company. The report suggested that Blackwater
never intended to armor its own vehicles. Instead, Blackwater employees
were told to ‘string along’ the other company in hopes of forcing them
out of their contract or giving them ’no choice but to buy us armored
cars,’ according to interviews by the committee staff with Blackwater
officials." This cutthroat competition is another aspect of the
pursuit of private profit.
Even
the political representatives of the capitalist class, the House
Committee members, were forced to draw the conclusion: "These
actions raise serious questions about the consequences of engaging
private, for-profit entities to engage in essentially military
operations in a war zone."
However,
the pursuit of private profit is not limited to private companies. The
military itself is being hit by corruption scandals involving billions
of dollars. The New York Times reported Sept. 24: “The accusations
against Major Cockerham are tied to a crisis of corruption inside the
behemoth bureaucracy that sustains America’s troops. Pentagon officials
are investigating some $6 billion in military contracts, most covering
supplies as varied as bottled water, tents and latrines for troops in
Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The
inquiries have resulted in charges against at least 29 civilians and
soldiers, more than 75 other criminal investigations and the suicides
of at least two officers.”
It
seems that "the market" is at least as big a threat to the
U.S. operation in Iraq as the armed resistance.
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