Occupational Hazards in Iraq

It's not just a job...it's an adventure.

Or, it was in the 1980s when the Cold War held us frozen in a strangely intangible struggle with Soviet Commies. There was real fear of war with the Soviets...a ground war in Europe, that is...and we also had the looming reality of Mutually Assured Destruction. But our widely dispersed military was meant to deter our foe...not engage it. Nor did we do much "occupying." We were "guests" on NATO soil, or of petty dictatorships we supported as bulwarks against Godless Communism. Our global reach in deterring the Commie menace meant soldiers did get "adventure" in the form of deployments to exotic places like South Korea, Germany, Italy and the Philippines. Shooting, invasion and house to house searches were not likely. In fact, the post-Vietnam military rarely was adventurous, save lame duck Grenada and an ill-advised sojourn in Beirut.

The irony is that the "adventure" of specialized training followed by exotic deployments in Europe and Asia was, in fact, a job. A good job. The stagflation of the late 70s and early 80s, the difficulty in paying for college for so many poor, working and middle-class kids...these factors converged with the Reagan build-up and its goal of forcing the Soviets' hand. The all-volunteer military was a way out of the dead-ends of urban decay, rural myopia and suburban burger flipping. It was a job, sold as an adventure.

Although the economy "recovered" and "grew," failed again during Poppy Bush's tenure and then "recovered" and "grew" again during Bubba Clinton...the imprint of the 80s build-up was indelible. Military service was a way out, offered techincal training and promised college money to those who couldn't afford it otherwise. It also corralled hundreds of thousands of former active duty and wannabe weekend warriors into Reserve and Guard units. For a people growing accustomed to working multiple jobs to make ends meet, it was an easy and patriotic way to get by. The ranks of the Guard and Reserves swelled.

But then the "adventure" part kicked in.

Poppy's Gulf War was the first, but it was a cake walk. Most of those killed were in friendly fire incidents, we had a world of support...literally, the whole damn world joined us...and there wasn't even a hint of occupation. Those soldiers' job was not an occupation...it was pure liberation. They did not fall victim to the hazards of occupation.

Then came W.

Now, those weekend warriors, young men and women seeking a way out and up and those military professionals who have served long enough to remember when the task was to deter, not to invade...they all have found out that their occupation is, indeed, an adventure. Or, more precisely, adventurism.

Now they find that their occupation is, well, an occupation...an ethical quagmire of control and domination of another people...in a land with a strikingly different language, different religion and culture. A country that lived through a decade of bombings and sanctions by those who now sell occupation as freedom and liberation and democracy.

They are wholly unprepared to live...and to fight to live...in a foreign land, coping with a hostile people who don't particularly care for being occupied. Sorta like Vietnam, or the West Bank and Gaza. Or like the Japanese faced in the Philippines and the Germans did with the French Resistance.

Although, the World War II analogies are flawed. No real internal strife. The Allies really were liberators who turned over whole countries to the people who lived there. And there was another occupying force being ejected...an enemy for the locals to despise...either German or Japanese.

No, the most precise analogy is the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And what we've seen over the last two decades is that an occupation of a people is dehumanizing. Dehumanizing to the occupied and to the occupier. We saw it in Vietnam, too. The "Strategic Hamlet" policy, destroying a village to "save" it from the Commies, the inherent racism that develops in troops as they are overwhelmed by a confusing, foreign environment in which enemies and allies are hard to discern. The Vietnamese became "Gooks" and atrocities started to mount as the years of occupation wore on.

But the American people are, conversely, quite removed from the occupational hazards our men and women face everyday in an Iraq coming apart at the seams. But we've had glimpses of just how dehumanizing military occupation is to both the Iraqis and our military. Abu Ghraib is the obvious example.

But it is those little, everyday ways that we don't see in our mainstream media maw that show just how dehumanizing occupation can be.

Incipient racism develops. Both major and minor cruelties occur in the cause of daily survival. Those cruelties emerge out of the frustration and the callousness that long-term deployment must create...the disassociation of one's basic humanity in a conflict with no rhyme or reason and no end in sight.

Cruelties like this:



It's disheartening to see Iraqi children toyed with for a momentary laugh, filmed by the perpetrators so they can laugh again later...back in the confines of the rarified world of the basecamp. Posted on the internet, it offers a glimpse into what must be dozen of incidents just like this everyday as kids...yes, 19-21 year-old soldiers are essentially kids...try to cope with the occupation of occupation. It is not an excuse, it's a truism. Occupation is hazardous to both the occupier and the occupied.

That is putting aside the fact that Iraqi children would clamor so desperately for a simple bottle of water. What that says about the Iraq we've created...our creative destruction...is just as horrific as the daily abuse the occupied Iraqis must feel simply from having foreign soldiers cruising their streets.

And it does get worse. The Brits, too, are falling victim to the dehumanization their presence in Iraq must have on British soldiers:



The glorified beating of young Iraqis, cheered while one particular boy screams for mercy, is tainting all of those involved...the soldiers doing the beating, the soldiers cheering and the soldiers filming it, or standing-by doing nothing to stop it. Think of those children...either chasing a highly-valued bottle of water, or being beaten mercilessly for throwing rocks...think of the generational fury we've created within them. Think of the orphans we've created, or those who have had soldiers storm into their homes in the dead of night. Or seen their father harassed or killed at a checkpoint. Their humanity is at stake...and their dignity is being bound up in feelings of revenge and hatred.

And then there are our soldiers. Vietnam's inherent cruelties created a generation of mental health problems. Suicides, homelessness, drug abuse. The men who suffered through the Strategic Hamlet program, the daily inhumanity of that war...they were scarred for life. Now we have two generations...the young Regulars and the older Reservists and Guard...who will come back after multiple deployments bearing the scars of their occupation. The scars of occupation. The price paid for greedy adventurism.

Taking out a Contract, Occupation-Style

America loves the Mafia. Loves it. The Godfather tops many people's favorite movie list. The Sopranos are, well, the Soparanos...a prime example of America's pop culture love affair with the brutal world of "it's just business." A world where life and death are traded like junk bonds. Since the 1930's, American cinema has been riddled with organized crime movies.

We love the simplicity...the "business" of it all. The profit motive stripped bare to expose it's most basic principle: in business and the bottom line, there are winners and losers. In the Mafia culture we seem so fascinated with, those bottom line decisions are tinged with the black and white outcomes we crave as Americans...a sort of Christian fatalism of redemption and damnation, of reward and punishment, played out in the marketplace.

The Capo di Capos, a.k.a. "the Boss" in this cinematic universe of absolutes, plays God. When he sees a "business opportunity" held by a rival or a moral failing among one of his underlings, he "puts out a contract" on his life. I guess this makes the person who carries it out a "contractor."

Enter Iraq...a land of contractors. Blackwater, Dyncorp, Custer Battles...companies filled with men who are there to fulfill a "contract." The contract, often, is a general one taken out on the Iraq people. Hey, it's just business, right? And damned if it ain't a lucrative one. Blackwater has grown like mold in a humid basement, spreading itself out across a re-newed, 6000 arce training center in North Carolina. Growth funded in no small part by contracts in, or "on," Iraq.

Dyncorp came of age in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. And Custer Battles has been fending off investigations for the last year.

And they are not the only ones. Like the Mafia and Organized Crime during Prohibition, Iraq has spurred an explosive growth of contractors...many of which are, simply put, contract killers. And make no mistake, these "security companies" are just that...contract killers who operate outside the system of accountability that applies to the US military. Like those contractors at Abu Ghraib who directed the torture and humiliation of Iraqis...which was, in turn, blamed on low-level troops. Those contractors slithered in, got the job done and slithered away without question.

C'mon. It's just business.

Don Rumfeld was a leading architect of bringing contractors into Iraq. Get it? "Don" Rumsfeld. He knew the business of America is business. A quote attributed to Calvin Coolidge...or was it Don Corleone?

And that business is making a new, psuedo-military mafia quite rich. So some Iraqis get killed...fuggeda 'bout it! Literally...they'd like you to forget about it.

See, the contract killers populating the hurly-burly of a totally disintegrated Iraq have free reign like those mythical mobsters we admire. And, as we learned today, there are some of these made men who make Joe Pesci look like Eliott Ness.

Contractor’s Boss in Iraq Shot at Civilians, Workers’ Suit Says

By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: November 17, 2006
CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 16 — Two former employees of an American private military contracting company have claimed in a Virginia court that they witnessed their supervisor deliberately shoot at Iraqi vehicles and civilians this summer, and that the company fired them for reporting the incidents.

The allegations, made in a lawsuit filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court, say Triple Canopy, one of the largest private military contractors to work with the United States in Iraq, retaliated against the men for reporting that the supervisor had committed violent felonies, and perhaps murder, on the job.

And this isn't the first time this has happened. Remember this video of Aegis Defence Services' "Greatest Hits"? These contracted killers videotaped a leisurely drive around Baghdad and randomly shot at Iraqis.


So, when we hear that contractors, formerly called mercenaries and properly called contract killers, get attacked, killed or, as we heard today, kidnapped...it's hard to have much sympathy. I mean, it's just business, after all.

George Carlin to summed it up in his last HBO special, Life Is Worth Losing:

"Besides, who cares about some mercenary civilian contractor from Oklahoma who gets his head cut off? Fuck 'em. Hey Jack, you don't want to get your head cut off? Stay the fuck in Oklahoma. They aint cuttin' of heads in Oklahoma, far as I know. But I do know this: you strap on a gun and go struttin' around some other man's country you better be ready for some action, Jack. People are touchy about that sort of thing."

Those Darn Iraqis

C'mon guys...can't you get it together? Can't you just get along?

You know what's causing all that strife in our country? What's making Americans so despondent? What's causing American men and women death, dismemberment and psychological scars? What's caused the Liberator-in-Chief to trot out Daddy's Damage Control Team (guys who cut their teeth on Iran-Contra) to think up some way to control the damage...the incredible damage...to our image around the world?

It's those darn Iraqis!

They're so unwilling to just come together and realize that the United States of Creating Failed States has given them an amazing opportunity to create a brand-spanking new country! Just look at what we've done for Afghanistan. Twice.

So listen up, Iraqis. Our election was the final straw. Now, we can't get all involved in hand-holding...those salad days are over. Now you have to take responsibility.

That's why we destroyed all that infrastructure. Just consider the fact that you have power about 6-8 hours per day, as compared to nearly 24 hours per day before the Great Liberation? This is a chance to create a new democracy of electricity.

And all those bombed roads and bridges? Avenues to a Western-style democracy waiting to happen. C'mon Iraqis...build a bridge or two to the 21st Century? Hey, we've even made your oil wealth easier to distribute...less people means more money for living!

Potable water, safe shopping at a market, education (particularly for women), torture and detention...this is the chance to create democratic versions of the tyrannical water, shopping, education and torture you once endured. As we say...give an Iraqi a fish and feed him for a day, teach an Iraq how to reorganize the rubble we've left behind and make him democratic for life! The fish will come later through the magic of the free market our Provisional Authority set in motion! Believe me, our agribusinesses invested in buying up farming rights for a reason! You just wait and see.

You see, the real problem in Iraq is not that we've destroyed your nation. Nor is it that we've unleashed pent-up antagonism created during Saddam's American-endorsed, American-supplied reign of tyranny. You know, that period from the late Seventies right up to the invasion of Kuwait...when we helped him eliminate internal enemies we identified as Commies; when we supplied him so he could attack Iran (while we were also illegally arming Iran, too, by the way); when we shook hands with him and channeled chemical and biological weapons to him; when gave him a nod and wink after he complained about Kuwaiti slant drilling into Iraq's southern oil fields and when he killed Kurdish rebels who were so darn annoying our Turkish friends.

Hey, we even told you to rise up after the Gulf War and take your country back from...well...the guy we had supported. You know, you could've made a democracy out of the tyranny we'd supported simply because we wanted a solid, united Iraq. Oh yeah, we didn't give you any air or ground support for that uprising, nor did we go to Baghdad and topple that all-important statue. But you have to remember, as Brother Rummy said, creating a democracy is a messy, long and hard slog.

Hey Iraq, don't lose faith in the long and hard slog we given you!

Heck, we're even going to hang Saddam! What more impetus do you need to take your future by the short a curlies?!?!

You see, Mr. and Ms. Iraqi...the onus is now on you. You have to take responsibility for our actions. You have to take control of your own security. We, by eliminating the army and internal security forces, made it possible for you to take responsibility anew. You can create a democracy of security!

And by flooding your country with billions of dollars that cycled back to crony American defense and construction companies...we have given you a chance to take responsibility for missing money. And since we've elevated the Kurds and the Shiites, aligning ourselves with Islamists who want women to wear veils and crave vengeance for the Sunni control we exploited for two decades...well...we've given you a chance to come together in peace! Get a time-table, you fortunate Iraqis. Take control. Take responsibility.

I mean, what's a democracy without responsibility?

Oh yeah, that'd be America, huh?

Suprise?! No October Surprise!

Okay, I was wrong. No worries...not the first time, not the last. But I thought Team Bush would pull out all the stops to keep the Dems from taking over Congress and using subpoena power to investigate every sordid nook, each scummy cranny that we've see in the darkened face of the Imperial Presidency.

I predicted an October Surprise.

Nope. Nada. Nothing.

October Surprises aren't unprecedented:

The sudden end of President Carter's deal with the Iranians to release the hostages back in 1980, which would've given Carter the late push he needed to beat Reagan...and mutated over ensuing years into Iran-Contra.

This Administration's ever-so-good fortune in having Osama make a last minute appearance before the 2004 election.

Or the 2000 October Surprise which wasn't felt until November...the pre-emptive purging of over 50,000 voters from Florida's voter rolls...people who, quite coincidentally, were mostly Black and Democrats and would've voted for Al Gore. People who were convicted of crimes in years like 2008, 2010. A purge lorded over by Katherine Harris.

This time? I was certain we'd see Osama's dead body. Or a major plot uncovered. And if all else failed? Diebold would deliver.

But I was wrong. Why? Because something has changed since Katrina, the brutal storm that blew open America's eyes. Then came all those terror plots kept coming out just as revelations of Republican malfeasance spun into the news cycle. And Lou Dobbs went on a one-man crusade to scream and shout about electronic voting machines. And then there were scandals...scandals that the scandalizers assumed would fall into the infamous American memory hole and leave the perps unscathed. In the end, it was all too much. Too much Abramoff and earmarks, too much Halliburton and torture, too much talk of a fading Constitution and the end of ethics, too much Iraq and to many polls showing that America was seen around the world as despised and dangerous.

There are many other factors, including a growing feeling (over one-third, according to one poll) that 9-11 stinks...the official story stinks. People may not know why or what, but many can no longer ignore the smell.

But the key to understanding the cyncism that undid the Mayberry Machiavellis, those cynical users of power and propaganda? Look no further than gas prices. Yeah, gas prices. Remember how high they were? Coupled, of course, with stories of record profits for oil companies. Add a jigger of Texas Oil Mafia crude (or is it the crude Texas Oil Mafia?) and people knew. They knew they were getting screwed. Then September came, the campaign got hotter and the prices dropped. This time the story was too blatant to ignore. The mainstream media and mainstreet America didn't hesitate to think it was a fix. That the Oil Boys in the White House had tacitly, implicitly or explicitly made it so...so it would ease American anxiety before they went to the polls. Gas got cheaper as the stakes got higher and nearly no one flinched at the idea that there was...gasp...a conspiracy to affect the outcome of the election.

Bring up electronic voting machines and you'll get, for the most part, the same reaction. As a people, we've become acclimated to the idea that there are no coincidences. And why not? We've endured six years of a presidency that leaves nothing to chance. Mission Accomplished pasted onto the photo op, then it is airbrushed out. Bush goes to Iraq for Thanksgiving as poses with a plastic "stunt turkey" in a Baghdad mess hall. Terror plots that aren't really plots at all. No bid contracts. Stage managed rallies with hand-picked audiences. Staged evidence to get into Iraq, complete with vials of supposed anthrax and child-like drawings of mobile weapons labs...none of which were based in reality or fact.

So, for people who've been so relentlessly propagandized, so consistently cajoled and manipulated...many headed into this election expecting "something." Like I was expecting "something." But the tipping point may have come last night...when all that chatter about Diebold and terror scares, all that media jabbering about a shoo-in Democrat victory...it all made it nearly impossible for our Perp-in-Chief and his Roving propagandist to play three card monty with the election. They couldn't steal this election. They couldn't do much of anything but let the election actually happen. The ether was too thick with cynicism, too full of skepticism...too gorged of a diet of misdirection.

Live by the sword, die by the sword...ain't that the way that saying goes? They've had six years of unfettered swordsmanship. Last night, they finally fell on it. And the crackpot crazies of conspiracy-land are no longer yelping on the fringe. Not anymore. There has been to much conspiring...or, as exit polls called it, too much corruption. Because, my fellow fringers, what is corruption without a conspiracy to make it work?

Last night? Last night we saw the corruption exposed and rejected. I was wrong...Americans didn't get played one more time. Christ, I love being wrong.