PICTURE foreign diplomats racing through Midtown – in armored SUVs, with automatic weapons bristling from the windows. It’s up to you to get out of their way.
Then a car backfires in Times Square – sounds like a shot. At the corner of 42nd and Broadway, the diplomats’ security guards open fire in all directions. Civilians fall dead and wounded by the dozen. The diplomats drive on.
How would we like it?
That’s the situation in Baghdad, where the lawless actions of mercenaries on steroids undercut the progress made at such great cost by our troops.
Last weekend, a convoy ferrying nervous-Nellie diplomats (do we have any other kind?) panicked. The guards, employed by Blackwater, shot the hell out of civilians going about their business in downtown Baghdad.
Nine dead, two dozen wounded.
Given what we know now, it looks like a war crime.
It’s bewildering that our anti-war crowd, while anxious to discredit our troops with lies, ignores the very real depredations of trigger-happy contractors – who don’t answer to military discipline.
How did we get to this?
Both Democrats and Republicans under-funded our ground forces for so long that, faced with the demands of counterinsurgency warfare and the occupation of a major country, we just didn’t have the numbers or the resources to do the job with soldiers and Marines.
So the Bush administration “outsourced” the work to thugs, vultures and cons. We wasted billions. And virtually every major contract to rebuild Iraq has failed to meet its goals.
And corporations that fail face no penalty. They just get new contracts.
Certainly, some contractors play constructive roles – feeding our troops, driving trucks and even providing passive security (such as checking IDs in the Green Zone). But when we turn loose armed-to-the-teeth psychos who can’t be prosecuted, we get into trouble.
And that’s no exaggeration. Thanks to a rule our diplomats insisted on, contractors who kill can’t be tried in Iraq. And, thanks to legal loopholes, they’re unlikely to face a single day in jail back home.
Yes, I realize that, among those security contractors, there are honorable veterans doing their best in a disciplined manner and just trying to pay the family bills. But a few bad apples don’t just spoil the barrel – they destroy the orchard.
Iraq’s government responded to last weekend’s bloodshed by ordering Blackwater out of the country. Now our diplomats are bullying Iraqi officials to let the company stay.
We should all be on the Iraqi side on this one. If we want a rule-of-law Iraq, the law must apply to U.S. contractors, too.
This is a big issue because, time and again, contractor shoot-’em-ups have either turned back the clock on local progress or triggered greater problems. Blackwater also gave us the cowboys who got lynched in downtown Fallujah in early 2004 – prompting an ordered-by-the-White-House response that defined the entire year.
Does the U.S. government really want to employ mercenaries? And sorry – if you take money to bear arms for a private corporation, you’re a mercenary. If you want to bear arms, enlist (or stay in).
Last weekend’s one-sided gun battle exposed (actually, re-exposed) another problem: In its wake, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has confined its diplomats to the Green Zone (not that they left it that often, anyway).
Ambassador Ryan Crocker gets high marks as an exception to the norm, but State’s Foreign Service Officers have revealed themselves as cowardly and incompetent throughout the Iraq experience.
Can any reader of this paper point to one meaningful success achieved by our diplomats in Iraq? Our diplos aren’t part of the solution – they’re part of the problem.
State demands authority, but flees from responsibility. Unable for years to cajole employees to volunteer for Iraq, Foggy Bottom finally made it a career near-necessity to do a few months in the Green Zone. The result? In the less-than-a-day I spent in that fantasyland last month, I heard complaints about junior State types pushing ahead of soldiers in the lunch line. (State employees are more important than folks in uniform, you see.)
Meanwhile, State is building the greatest white elephant in our diplomatic history – the largest U.S. embassy in the world – in Baghdad. Set aside the alleged corruption and incompetence riddling the project: Building a Saddam-style monument isn’t just lunatic vanity, it’s breathtakingly stupid – it proclaims that we intend to stay and rule.
Couldn’t our diplomats try a little humility? Just once?
Here’s the bottom line on all of this:
* If our diplomats can’t go to the latrine without an armed posse, State needs to ask Congress for funding to expand its in-house security capabilities. No more thugs.
* We should respect the Iraqi government’s decision to give Blackwater the boot. Other security companies might just pay attention and explain to their employees that Iraqi civilians aren’t hunting trophies.
* We need to stop the blather about “interagency responsibility-sharing” in occupations. The other guys don’t show up, so our troops end up holding the bag. Our military doesn’t want to do occupations, but it’s the only institution with the essential knowledge, discipline and infrastructure. Get over it, general: Embrace the mission.
* We need a clear, single chain of command during military operations abroad. And the big-hat, no-cattle State Department can only have an advisory role.
Our troops have done splendidly, their leaders are doing better and better – and our diplomats still flounder. If we expect Iraqis to clean up their act, let’s clean up our own.
Retired Army officerRalph Peters’s latest book is “Wars Of Blood And Faith.”