{"id":3635,"date":"2010-11-14T16:23:40","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T16:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=3635"},"modified":"2010-11-14T16:23:40","modified_gmt":"2010-11-14T16:23:40","slug":"review-of-blackwater-the-rise-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-mercenary-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2010\/11\/review-of-blackwater-the-rise-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-mercenary-army\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of \u201cBlackwater: The Rise of the World\u2019s Most Powerful Mercenary Army\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Slog through the murky depths of scandal, controversy, and murder in Jeremy Scahill\u2019s chilling account of Blackwater Worldwide\u2019s ascension to prominence as the world\u2019s most powerful private military company (PMC). Jeremy Scahill earns his keep as an accomplished investigative journalist by shedding light on some of the inner workings of Blackwater, refreshing perspectives on Blackwater\u2019s notorious actions, and giving the reader a glimpse of the enigmatic man behind the mercenary army in this book while marinating a narrative that is both highly informed and very readable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your reviewer highly recommends Blackwater: The Rise of the World\u2019s Most Powerful Mercenary Army<\/em> for those who wish to understand more about Blackwater, private military contractors in general, their impact on modern warfare, and their implications for the pursuit of peace in a dangerous world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scahill starts off Blackwater<\/em> with an account of the Nisour Square incident that first brought the mercenary company out of the shadows of relative obscurity to international infamy, with the introduction entitled \u201cBaghdad\u2019s Bloody Sunday.\u201d The account, which documents Blackwater\u2019s murder of 17 innocent Iraqis, including women and children, and the following failed actions by Congress and the Iraqi government to hold them accountable. The narrative then moves on to outline in encyclopedic detail Blackwater\u2019s beginnings, and how it grew to encompass mercenaries from all over the world and win no-bid contracts from the US government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeremy Scahill\u2019s intention in writing Blackwater<\/em> was to expose Erik Prince\u2019s private army for what it really was, and to this end he failed to disappoint. His book is the<\/em> go-to source for understanding Blackwater. Painstaking effort is put into every page of every chapter to ensure accuracy, making this book an effective text for both historical and sociological value. Scahill works as an investigative journalist. He is a regular contributor to Democracy Now!<\/em> y The Nation<\/em>, and has reported from Iraq, Yugoslavia and post-Katrina New Orleans. He has a reputation for challenging the US government on issues of foreign as well as domestic policy, and to this end he has been a successful muckraking journalist in trying to raise awareness and bring facts to light about our government\u2019s policies towards Iraq, Cuba, and domestically, concerning the response to Hurricane Katrina. Scahill has a bias, yet is able to give a clear journalistic account of Blackwater\u2019s actions without that interfering, making Blackwater every bit as good (if not better) than any other text on recent history.<\/span>\"\"<\/a> Understanding the rise and role of PMCs is important to understanding conflict as it exists in today\u2019s world, and the implications that has for the study of and progress towards peace. The traditional roles of state armies and private armies are starting to mesh in a way that we haven\u2019t seen in the past. The US government is using contractors for virtually everything, from civilian work such as construction and maintenance, to protecting VIPs in war zones and conducting \u201cenhanced interrogations.\u201d At the same time, PMCs have created a legal vacuum in which contractors have been able to commit crime without being held accountable.<\/span><\/p>\n

This has created new challenges for peace in countries currently being occupied by PMCs on the government\u2019s payroll. Blackwater\u2019s presence in Fallujah intensified the conflict and necessitated a number of bloody sieges that altered the case of the Iraq war. Crimes committed by Blackwater have served to create renewed resistance to the American presence in Iraq and for many to call for the PMC\u2019s immediate withdrawal. The presence of private military firms have proven to have an incendiary effect on public opinion concerning the \u201cwar on terror\u201d and have made peace a harder thing to come by.<\/span><\/p>\n

America’s proverbial \u201cpraetorian guard\u201d of hardened mercenaries from around the globe bodes more of a warmonger than a \u201cpeace maker.\u201d Companies like Blackwater have enormous implications towards how wars are fought, and thus, how peace is attained in the aftermath. After all, if an invading country deploys an army of hired guns who shoot civilians at random without any legal repercussions within that country or the invaders country, how likely are you to want to sit down to peaceful negotiations with these people?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span>Are you going to trust in that country\u2019s \u201cgood intentions\u201d to \u201cspread democracy\u201d when they give war criminals virtual immunity from prosecution? The answer is no. Those interested in the study of peace, and in creating peace where there is conflict, need to understand the unique challenge that PMC\u2019s like Blackwater pose to peace, and this book is an important in understanding these problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, five Blackwater operatives have surrendered in a federal court and will be facing charges for the Nisour Square incident.\u00a0 A sixth guard has pleaded guilty to a count of voluntary manslaughter. It now seems that Blackwater Worldwide is finally being held accountable for at least one of its actions. This is due in no small part to the awareness and insight provided by Scahill\u2019s book. Jeremy Scahill put forth a monumental effort in conducting his investigation. He was able to find out more about the PMC\u2019s activities than the congressional oversight committee, and exposed Erik Prince\u2019s mercenary outfit for the shady group that it was.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blackwater: The Rise of the World\u2019s Most Powerful Mercenary Army<\/em> is a very important book, and I encourage everyone to read this chilling account.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slog through the murky depths of scandal, controversy, and murder in Jeremy Scahill\u2019s chilling account of Blackwater Worldwide\u2019s ascension to prominence as the world\u2019s most..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,21,183,43],"tags":[197,226],"class_list":["post-3635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-international","category-literature","category-media-culture","tag-imperialism","tag-imperialist-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/blackwater.jpg?fit=420%2C634&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}