For those of you who watch 24 and missed last night’s episode, this is a bit of a “spoiler alert”. No, this isn’t a review of the show or commentary on its controversial nature. The story I’m choosing to write about involves the latest plot twist where a private military company called Starkwood is believed to be complicit in atrocities around the world and is planning an imminent attack on US soil.
What drew me to this story were the uncanny parallels between the non-fictional Blackwater Worldwide (now called Xe due to constant bad publicity) and the fictional Starkwood. Xe, a US based private corporation, operates in a paramilitary/security/training capacity around the world. Employees are made of highly specialized ex-military and law enforcement professionals who train US and foreign military, government agencies, local police forces, and private citizens.
Perhaps it is time to take a serious look at the potential dangers of blood for money corporations and halt their operations before things get out of control. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
· All private corporations operate in the interest of profit and growth. There is something inherently wrong when an entity’s very existence is dependent on the continuation of war and insecurity around the world.
· When peace and security is a threat to the survival of a business, it is very possible that such business will do whatever it takes to reduce and eliminate such threats.
· Companies training both US and foreign militaries begs the question, “whose side are they REALLY on?”
· Throughout history, we’ve seen how private industries (arms, finance, energy, pharmaceutical, etc.) gain influence with high-level connections in both government and private institutions around the world. These connections have rarely held the public’s interest as a primary motivator.
· Paramilitaries are not bound to the same rules and regulations as US military personnel are. The laws governing their behavior on foreign soil gets even trickier and rarely do the wheels of justice turn.
· Historical note: Adolf Hitler’s Sturmabteilung or "brown shirts" were a private army of specialized WWI soldiers who were key to his rise to power through terror and intimidation within Germany. We all know what happened after Hitler came to power. Could the same thing happen here in the US today? It almost did in 1933.
· Another fictional parallel: Star Wars fans saw the potential evil of paramilitaries in Episodes II & III with the rise of Emperor Palpatine’s clone stormtrooper army.
What do you think about all of this? Should the US government be using your
tax dollars to employ the services of companies like Xe?
Xe was of course a military attempt to gain control over a large portion of world military, which is why it is so hard to answer the question you proposed above: who's side are they really on? If we look at who has the most invested in Xe, we get our power source.
It is clear we should not as a nation of tax payers be funding this, and a small step toward solving that problem would be to end our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know what the hell Obama is doing planning to send 21,000 more troops overseas. I make it a policy of mine to be loyal to principles and not people. I agree with Obama on the majority of issues, but he's playing the middle a little to much now.
sorry 'bout the tangent...I agree with u on pretty much everything...
Posted by: doncannon987 | Friday, April 03, 2009 at 12:02 PM