Blackwater Limited - a subsidiary of Blackwater USA, a mercenary army for sale. Corporations, foreign governments, perhaps even wealthy individuals... everyone can get a taste.
This diary will examine American Christian zealotry, briefly revisit an example of corporate warfare, and raise connections/predictions/questions regarding the current role 'private contractors' are playing in world affairs. If you want to skip to the meat of this post skip the first 2/3rds. The information regarding Greystone is predominantly taken from Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."
It is far too easy to underestimate the impact religion has on U.S. politics. The common conception that the New Right exploited Evangelicals/Fundamentalists for their votes while clandestinely mocking their piety behind closed doors might apply to some Republican strategists, but by no means all. Many of the upper echelon of the GOP are themselves precariously devout. How this fundamentalism affects our foreign policy is impossible to quantify, yet, to understand our current quagmire, is critical to assess.
Beginning with our Commander-in-Chief, the powerful are the pious. Beyond his slip of tongue of labeling the Iraq War a crusade, President Bush has taken religious rhetoric to a Pat Robertson level. Is anyone else disturbed by SOTU addresses layered with apocalyptic language, where the U.S. appears to be divinely chosen to spread the untamed fire of freedom to the darkest corners of the world? Are we blurring the lines of theocracy when George Bush states:
I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists’
Bush should have learned from LBJ's mistakes - God is a horrible political advisor who demands an impossible schedule, only offering advice in the wee hours of the morning.
In all seriousness, is there not a direct correlation that the two greatest military blunders in America's recent history, Vietnam and Iraq, were conducted by presidents who 'spoke' to God? The consequences of putting blind faith, and not fact and reason, behind policy can only lead down troubling roads. As Stephen Colbert articulately and hilariously proved in his 2006 presidential roast, going with your gut might feel like the right choice, but in the end, it is your brain that you should be relying on.
In obvious preference of their gut, an astounding 55% of Bush voters in 2000 were Christian fundamentalists who believed in an approaching apocalypse and rapture. The implications of this statistic alone are mind-boggling, thank you Kevin Phillips. This 55% believed that the world could end at any time, death and violence on an unimaginable level occurring beforehand, and that Jesus Christ would descend from heaven to reward those who have followed his teachings and accepted him as the son of God. Of course, just as in death, those who had not accepted Christ as their savior would go to hell, spending an eternity in punishment.
There sure are a lot of souls out there to save.
It was not souls Samuel Zemmuray was trying to save when he hired private mercenaries to overthrow the government of Honduras, only bananas. It was the beginning of the 20th century, and America was treating South and Central America like it was the 1980's on imperial steroids. From 1869 to 1897, America had sent warships 5,980 times to Latin American ports to secure commercial interests, so Zemmuray's aggression was by no means unprecedented. In an attempt to install favorable trade agreements and property rights for his enterprise, Cuyamel Fruit Company, Zemmuray hired Louisianans Lee Christmas and Guy Molony for the coupe, who followed through successfully. The transaction was simple and alarming; a business hired mercenaries to do its dirty work.
Over a 100 years later, history is repeating itself. On May 13th, 2004, Greystone Limited was declared open for business. The company is a subsidiary of Blackwater USA, yet is registered as a tax-exempt corporate entity in Barbados, unlike Blackwater which is based in North Carolina. Like Blackwater, Greystone declares itself to be an advantageous asset in 'the global war on terror' and offers similar mercenary/training/security work that its parent company has become notorious for. Blackwater is contracted by the U.S. government. Greystone is contracted by _____.
On February 19th, 2005, Blackwater held an extravagant 'inauguration party' for the recently conceived Greystone. The event lasted 7 hours and was held at the posh Ritz Carlton in D.C. Foreign diplomats, weapons manufactures, representatives of the international monetary fund, and most importantly, oil company executives were among the guest list. In the pamphlets that were distributed that night, Greystone proclaimed:
It is more difficult than ever for your country to successfully protect its interests against diverse and complicated threats in today’s grey world where solutions to your security concerns are no longer as simple as black and white.
Greystone is dedicated to providing the best physical security assets from around the world in support of freedom, peacemaking, and the maintenance of peace.
...ready deployment in support of national security objectives as well as private interests.
The middleman we call government has been cut out of the transaction. An oil company can directly hire Greystone to quell 'terrorists' who are blowing up pipelines, demanding resource nationalization, and attempting to end the kleptocracy we rely on for cheap oil. All a company has to do is convince Greystone that the job is in support of the war on terror, which when considering the fundamentalist make-up of Greystone's administration will not be a difficult task.
Blackwater and Greystone were co-founded and founded, respectively, by the conservative billionaire, Erik Prince. Prince is an ardent Bush supporter, having given consent after the 2004 election to the mass email that flooded Blackwater employees' mailboxes that was titled "BUSH WINS FOUR MOR YEARS!! HOOYAH!!" Prince was enchanted by Pat Buchanan's outlandish presidential bid in 1992. After working as an intern for Bush Sr.'s administration, he declared:
I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with - homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.
Prince is a member of the Council for National Policy, a heavily influential organization founded by apocalyptic-fiction author and Reverend Tim LaHaye. He has donated $200,000 to the Haggai Institute, a missionary organization that has trained 60,000 evangelical leaders and generally concentrates on developing countries.
When saving souls and corporate interest coincide, invasions and exploitation follows. Maybe years from now the truth will surface, but we are far from that day. These type of companies work in a world of black contracts and confidentiality agreements. From what little we do know though, it can be assumed that warfare outsourcing is approaching an all time high.
Sources: Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater. Kevin Phillips - American Theocracy. Greg Grandin - Empire's Workshop.