A Tough Spot

Mark Kleiman on the Blackwater massacre:

Yes, the Blackwater fighters were in a tough spot, surrounded by what they knew was a hostile population; if they'd been guarding someone in New York when a bomb went off, they wouldn't have fired wildly into a crowd of American civilians. But since that hostile Iraqi population is crucial to our effort in Iraq — not to mention being the people we're supposedly in Iraq to help — maybe Blackwater and the State Department ought to be a little bit more careful about increasing their hostility.

And, yes, they should be more careful. But why not go further. How about not putting people in these situations? Instead of having tens of thousands of armed Americans living in a country surrounded by hostile civilians who they can ill-afford to alienate, what if those Americans just left the country and went elsewhere? We've been in Iraq for many years now, and we're well past the hearts and minds point where if we get our troops and mercenaries all on their best behavior we might win the Iraqis over.

US Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Quinton Russ

Comments

Well, you know, must destroy the village to save the village. As usual.

Posted by abb1 | October 3, 2007 9:32 AM

Good luck.

If we got out of Iraq, how would the well-bred ubermensches like Erik Prince get their opportunites to make a $1M per year? Did you see his smirking face yesterday? And the website that justexposes his prim white face with Waxman's and asks the overwhelming question: who is more trustworthy?

Posted by gregor | October 3, 2007 9:34 AM

Here's what the neocons would like to do about all this: Nuke a small city in Iraq or Iran, one away from oilfields or of some other strategic importance. Just kill a few hundred thousand people to teach everyone a lesson, you don't fuck with the United States. When the inevitable blowback occurs nuke another. Repeat until everyone (theoretically) knuckles under and does exactly what we demand, when we demand it, solely on our terms. We're taking your oil, your land, your forests, your minerals, commandeering control of your waterways and controlling your airspace. All ot it. It's ours. I'm sure Cheney, Bolton, Hadley, Feith and a few others think this ultimately needs done. You don't like Blackwater shooting your Mama? Shut the fuck up or we'll vaporize your city, just like we did Haditha. Got that? These guys DREAM of doing this. You just know they do.

Posted by steve duncan | October 3, 2007 9:47 AM

Judging by what happened in Vietnam, it's virtually impossible to disentangle the requirements of standard counterinsurgency doctrine -- minimum necessary force, winning hearts and minds, the primacy of political over military aims -- from the "fighting with one hand tied behind your back" complaint. In Iraq, the problem is complicated by the PMCs, a huge force of guys whose mission and instincts have nothing to do with winning hearts and minds, and everything to do with force protection. When your primary mission is the protection of your own guys, obviously, you get massacres.

In Vietnam, the same kinds of problems played out as differences in philosophy between different services, with the hearts-and-minds strategies of (early) Green Berets and Marines like Gens. Lewis Walt and Creighton Abrams undermined by Westmoreland's body-count-oriented Army, and by the depredations of hunter-killer units like Tiger Force, which were never meant to be turned loose in civilian areas. For an example of how this worked in Vietnam, see here.

Posted by matt steinglass | October 3, 2007 9:47 AM

"Did you see his smirking face yesterday?"

Man, oh, man did I want to swipe that shit-eating grin off his smug little....

While I don't think I'm in immediate need of an anger management course, it's hard not to lower oneself to "wanting to thrash the living daylights" out that pathetic little snot.

A before some yeehaa tells me about Mr. Prince's "special ops" training and how I'd likely "lose" such a confrontation, let me assure you that there'd be no need for fisticuffs since I'd wither his very soul with my truculent repartee.

Posted by Rihilism | October 3, 2007 9:55 AM

I don't see where there's any reason to believe they would not have fired into the crowd had they been in New York. All we know for sure about them is that they tend to flip out and start firing at everybody nearby. I bet they'd feel "threatened" enough to put on their cowboy show no matter where they were.

Posted by MikeJ | October 3, 2007 10:11 AM

It's really weird to be reading about the effect the Boston Massacre had on the course of our revolution while all of this is coming to light...

Posted by serial catowner | October 3, 2007 10:28 AM

what if those Americans just left the country and went elsewhere? We've been in Iraq for many years now, and we're well past the hearts and minds point

Of course, if we would have gone in with a (flexible) timeline, then it would have sent a clear message that our interests were not in permanently occupying Iraq and much of the insurgency might not have happened in the first place ... or they'd be so busy "waiting it out", they'd end up getting involved in the political process and loosing their will to fight.

But the people in charge of the war (who really want permanent bases in Iraq -- they said so -- even if they call any of us who point that out "paranoid moonbats") convinced everyone that it would be foolish to go in with a timeline as any opposition would wait out our limitted occupation, etc., etc.

Isn't it amazing how the admin and their allies dismiss just about any serious strategic ploy as being "unserious"? It's almost as if these people want to loose ... almost as if they want their former friends (remember Iran/Contra?) in Iran to gain influence and then to fight them (of course in Iran/Contra days, we also were, literally, embracing Saddam Hussein) ... it's almost as if these people really are the loonies who want to spread "Islamo-fascism" that they claim us to be ...

more right wing projection? not a suprise!

Posted by DAS | October 3, 2007 10:31 AM

"...what if those Americans just left the country and were elsewhere? We've been in Iraq for many years now, and we're well past the hearts and minds point."

What a stroke of genius! Move into a country, trash it's government and then just leave! If only foreign policy was that easy. Pathetic.

You aren't paying attention if you think we are "well past the hearts and minds point." In large parts of the country the US military is the most highly respected group in the mix.

Posted by danceswithgoats | October 3, 2007 11:22 AM

Actually, I think Kleiman is simply wrong in that description. So far, we know, from CNN, that the 'spot report', written on Embassy stationary and reported, by the Washington Post among others, as the official 'embassy' account, was actually written by Blackwater - who, apparently, are also paid to monitor security services. In other words, they are paid to regulate themselves. From other accounts, we have a carbomb going off a mile from the scene of the incident, and before the incident occured. And we have the fact that this particular car bomb wasn't discovered by Blackwater, and that the person Blackwater was protecting escaped injury more by accident than by anything Blackwater was doing. So we have a bunch of thugs who are in a situation in which they feel like they've been made to feel like jerks, and we have a very common traffic problem - for, by all accounts, Blackwater has handled traffic problems by sheer force, and with no kind of system, so that it is hard for Iraqi drivers to know what they want - as it would be for American drivers to know, say, what traffic policemen from Basra want if, by some horrible circumstance, they were suddenly directing traffic in downtown D.C.

So there was no tough spot, and the hostile Iraqis were doing nothing when fired upon, according to all but Blackwater's account. A massacre is a massacre. Blackwater must go.

Posted by roger | October 3, 2007 11:46 AM

I agree, except we were already totally boned after Abu Ghraib.

That was three years ago!

Posted by chris | October 3, 2007 11:55 AM

ps - the American accounts of the massacre of Nisour square have been, of course, conditioned by the American journalist's reflex pro-administration posturings. But the veil over those events is lifting - the MSM determination to talk about 11 dead, in contradiction to the Iraqi government investigation, which put the dead above 20, has cracked with the latest NYT story. Instead of an angry mob, the sequence goes like this, according to James Glanz:

"A deadly cascade of events began when a single bullet apparently fired by a Blackwater guard killed an Iraqi man whose weight probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward as the passenger, the man’s mother, clutched him and screamed.

¶The car continued to roll toward the convoy, which responded with an intense barrage of gunfire in several directions, striking Iraqis who were desperately trying to flee.

¶Minutes after that shooting stopped, a Blackwater convoy — possibly the same one — moved north from the square and opened fire on another line of traffic a few hundred yards away, in a previously unreported separate shooting, investigators and several witnesses say."

Blackwater must go.

Posted by roger | October 3, 2007 12:24 PM

The other useful question never asked is: why do these nitwits we send to Iraq need "force protection"? Do we really need 50,000 security guards in Iraq? Even if you assume 5 or 10 of them are protecting one guy at any given time?

We have 5,000 US people wandering around Iraq needing protection?

For what? What are these 5,000 doing? They aren't military - they have their own protection.

Diplomats? We have 5,000 DIPLOMATS in Iraq? Doing what?

I think people need to look at WHO is being protected here. I suspect we'd find a number of oil company executives and other war profiteers, a handful of State Department and other US agency people, maybe a bunch of CIA spooks who are too busy "spying" to protect themselves, and the like.

In other words, basically, nobody who should be there in the first place.

If Blackwater is protecting Iraqis - like a similar PMC is protecting Karzai in Afghanistan with something like 700 security guards - then that pretty well makes it clear that no Iraqi politician in Iraq is safe from his own people.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 3, 2007 3:21 PM

Five people were killed in the Boston Massacre.

Posted by croatoan | October 3, 2007 3:26 PM

"What a stroke of genius! Move into a country, trash it's government and then just leave! If only foreign policy was that easy. Pathetic."

Thank you. That was a concise and thoughtful summary of Bush/Rumsfeld's "strategy". Given it's extraordinary level of succes, no reason to think we shouldn't continue following the lead of those who designed it.

Posted by Rihilism | October 3, 2007 7:44 PM

"How about not putting people in these situations?"

Sorry. Invading Iraq was fait accompli the moment Bush's cousin told Fox News to call the election for him. No second thoughts allowed -- especially if they force ol' Georgie to dwell on icky thoughts like the human cost of war. Hell, that's why he signed up with the TANG.

serialcatowner: "It's really weird to be reading about the effect the Boston Massacre had on the course of our revolution while all of this is coming to light."

OT, but there are also eerie parallels between the Battles of Lexington & Concord and the Battle of Mogadishu. And not in a good way. (Wow! The Redcoats had helicopters!?)

Posted by Grumpy | October 3, 2007 7:53 PM