There is no question that the Fallujah killings in March 2004 boosted Blackwater’s corporate success. On the one hand—some would say the cynical way of seeing things—you could say that Erik Prince cashed in on the deaths and saw right away the benefits of the highly publicized killings. Another way of looking at it is that the fortuitously timed killings happened to provide Blackwater the perfect venue and audience to further its already-active campaign to blaze a path toward greater privatization—with it, of course, at the forefront. The mercenary rebranding campaign, aimed at accelerating the pace of privatization to maximize profits, has allowed companies like Blackwater to build a permanent institutionalized presence for themselves within the structures of the state. The rebranding provides great PR opportunities and recruitment rhetoric while rolling out a ready-made justification scheme for politicians and various bureaucracies to outsource and privatize more and more taxpayer-funded military and security operations leading to added legitimacy and ever-growing profits. And this brings it all full circle: at the end of the day, it still boils down to money—a lot of it.
Exactly how much money the U.S. government has paid mercenary firms is nearly impossible to pin down—a fact due in no small part to the apparent lack of transparent or comprehensive bookkeeping. A June 2006 Government Accountability Office report acknowledged “neither the Department of State, nor DOD, nor the USAID—the principal agencies responsible for Iraq reconstruction efforts—had complete data on the costs associated with using private security providers.”104 But the report found that “as of December 2004, the agencies and contractors we reviewed had obligated more than $766 million for security services and equipment” in Iraq.105 The GAO found that security often accounted for more than 15 percent of the cost of operating in Iraq, not including the security costs of subcontractors, and the State Department reported that security costs accounted for 16-22 percent of reconstruction projects.106 Given estimates of the total reconstruction cost from 2004 to 2007 of $56 billion, even a conservative 10 percent allocation for security would mean $5.6 billion.107 The bottom line is that the U.S. government has not provided publicly verifiable information on many of the private military companies it is increasingly hiring with taxpayer dollars.
Blackwater alone has won more than a billion dollars in publicly identifiable U.S. government contracts under the war on terror, not including much of its “black” or “urgent and compelling need” business or its work for private actors. And its rhetoric of saving taxpayer money through free-market efficiencies seems increasingly empty. With the U.S. government unable or unwilling to effectively tabulate its own expenditures on private security /military services, a worldwide estimate proves even more elusive. In 2003, just as the Iraq War was getting under way, and before the major mercenary boom had begun, P. W. Singer estimated the value of the private military industry at more than $100 billion globally.108 Homeland Security Research, an industry tracking company, estimated that governments and businesses globally spent $59 billion in 2006 to fight terrorism, a figure that does not include many “passive” private security services and that represents a sixfold increase from 2000.109
What this means in practical terms is that the rebranding campaign is enabling the mercenaries to affix a permanent sieve to the most lucrative feeding trough in the world—the national budgets of the United States and its war-making allies. These “services” are no longer reserved for unstable nations struggling to maintain power but are being welcomed by the great powers of the world as an integral part of their national forces. In talking about the “expanding role” of the mercenary industry, Cofer Black said, “I think it is something that we all need to think about. We need to talk about and sort of agree. I do not see us going back. I do not see the national forces being increased exponentially, and I see [using companies like Blackwater] as a useful cost-effective tool.”110
What is particularly disturbing about the “expanding role” of Blackwater specifically is the issue of the company’s right-wing leadership, its proximity to a whole slew of conservative causes and politicians, its Christian fundamentalist agenda and secretive nature, and its deep and longstanding ties to the Republican Party, U.S. military, and intelligence agencies. Blackwater is quickly becoming one of the most powerful private armies in the world, and several of its top officials are extreme religious zealots, some of whom appear to believe they are engaged in an epic battle for the defense of Christendom. The deployment of forces under this kind of leadership in Arab or Muslim countries reinforces the worst fears of many in the Islamic world about a neo-Crusader agenda masquerading as a U.S. mission to “liberate” them from their oppressors. What Blackwater seemingly advocates and envisions is a private army of God-fearing patriots, well paid and devoted to the agenda of U.S. hegemony—supported by far lower paid cannon fodder, foot soldiers from Third World countries, many of which have legacies of brutal U.S.-sponsored regimes or death squads. For its vaunted American forces, Blackwater has expanded the mercenary motivating factor (or rationalization) beyond simple monetary gain (though that remains a major factor) to a duty-oriented, patriotic justification. “This is not about business and widgets and making money, at least not in our company it is not,” said Cofer Black.111 “If you’re not willing to drink the Blackwater Kool-aid and be committed to supporting humane democracy around the world, then there’s probably a better place” to go work than Blackwater, “because that’s all we do,” Taylor told The Weekly Standard.112
In the bigger ideological picture, Blackwater executives fancy themselves part of a “just” mercenary tradition. “This is nothing new,” asserted IPOA’s Doug Brooks. “Even George Washington had contractors.”113 It is a line that Blackwater executives love. Indeed, they often cite the statues in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House as monuments to their trade and tradition. In the middle of the park is a statue of President Andrew Jackson on horseback. Flanking the four corners of the park are statues of mercenaries who fought on the U.S. side in the Revolutionary War: France’s Gen. Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette and Maj. Gen. Comte Jean de Rochambeau; Poland’s Gen. Thaddeus Kosciuszko; Prussia’s Maj. Gen. Baron Frederich Wilhelm Von Steuben (the object of Prince Group general counsel Joseph Schmitz’s obsession). “The idea of contractors on the battlefield, contractors doing this sort of thing, that it’s a new idea, is just wrong,” Erik Prince told a military conference in 2006.114 Citing the statues at Lafayette Park, Prince said, “Those are four military officers, foreign officers, contractors if you will, that came here and built the capability of the continental army, the continental army was having a tough time until they showed up. On Von Steuben’s statue it says he gave military training and discipline to the citizen-soldiers who achieved the independence of the United States. That’s what we’re doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, wherever we get hired and authorized to do so by the U.S. government, we’re giving them the capability to defend themselves, and to clean out their own problems, so you don’t have to send big conventional military to do that. You know, German mercenaries fought on behalf of the union in the civil war, even won the medal of honor.” Cofer Black echoed the narrative: “There is nothing new in this. What we are really talking about is the management of this for the good of the country and to achieve the objective. Lafayette Park could be called Contractor Park for our heroes that came to this country that trained us, trained our forebears.”115