Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Do you remember when the "US Contractors" were brutally killed in Fallujah in May, 2004? The US public relations apparatus named these "civilian" deaths and pumped up a great public outcry against the inhuman enemy who would kill US civilian contractors, people who were nominally there to help.

Here is a link to the CNN reportage...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/31/iraq.main/

You can see how if these had been named "military" casualties, the deaths of US contracted mercenary soldiers, then the public opinion regarding our options and the nature of our enemy would have been altered. As it was, the managed news releases confused the US public to the extent that the deaths were seen as murders, not war casualties, murders of working men, not soldiers.

So yes, there is a good reason why US (Blackwater and other companies') Mercenaries are not called Mercenaries: The US public would be less sympathetic. The misnaming is part of what many of us who have opposed the Bush wars from the beginning think of as "the big lie," a pattern of deceit that conflates Iraqis with al Qaeda, stirs up fear about WMDs where tehre are no WMDs, and so forth. We who oppose the Bush wars are afraid now that these same methods will be used to aggravate a case for war with Iran, when there is no legitimate casus belli besides peak oil gamesmanship.

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I gather that Blackwater employs many people for functions other than those typically associated with mercenary soldiers. On that basis, I've heard commentators argue that it's misleading to call Blackwater's employees "mercenaries," as though all were surrogate soldiers.

On the other hand, refusing to call surrogate soldiers "mercenaries" because they share an employer with translators, accountants, drivers, and supply clerks strikes me as intellectually dishonest.

Is there any reason why Blackwater "contractors" are not more properly termed "mercenaries"

Because everything is "miscellaneous."

I am uneasy with AKMA's response. "I gather" and "I've heard commentators argue" are two phrases that are less than rigorous and less than compelling without sources. According to Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater has 2300 active troops deployed around the world, and 20,000 elite soldiers on standby for deployment wherever they may be contracted.

AKMA goes on to talk about non-combat Blackwater employees. I don't know about that. Eric Prince claims he provides training, not combat troops. And of course Blackwater isn't the only mercenary provisioning contractor with troops in Iraq supporting the US effort. But it is a fact of military life that there is a high ratio of support personnel for every front line trooper. According to this article, the US ratio is more than 3 to 1. It would make sense that Blackwater hires logistical employees as well, and if they indeed have 2300 front line troops on the ground in Iraq, then they would need about 7500 non-combat mercenary soldiers to provide them logistical support. But a mercenary soldier is a mercenary soldier, not a "surrogate soldier."

My final aside regarding AKMA's comment relates to the phrase "intellectually dishonest." This seems to create a distinction between other kinds of dishonesty and intellectual dishonesty: "Moral dishonesty," for example. It also takes some of the sting away from calling those who deny the mercenary presence of Blackwater and the several other private security firms' troops either liars or ingenuously ill-informed. I see no need for the distinction.

I've started and deleted a couple of responses to Frank's comment. Perhaps it will suffice to note that I'm not sure he detests the mendacious rationalizations involved any more than I do. He does very much want to occupy higher moral ground, though, and this I yield to him.

I do want to occupy higher moral ground, and there is plenty of room at the top! Not higher than you AKMA, just high. And I thought it appropriate to note the old cliche about an army traveling on its stomach (the cooks, the truck drivers, all soldiers) while somehow avoiding it. And I have already been taken to task off-line for picking a fight with you AKMA, and really all I wanted to do was to point out that there is a black and white issue regarding the use of mercenaries. Reading your comment I thought that this might not be quite as clear to you as it is to me.

Mendacity is such a great word. Reminds me of a Tennessee Williams drama!

I'm embarrassed, because as I read AKMA's initial comment again, I see that it was constructed with the first paragraph simply acknowledging David's puzzlement that Blackwater troops are not universally acknowledged to be mercenary soldiers -- and he neither confirmed nor denied his own agreement with what other people say. The second paragraph strongly implies that many Blackwater troops ARE indeed mercenary soldiers.

I am so simple that I thought his subtlety merely a lack of understanding that the US government has hired many mercenaries to wage a war for which our armed forces can not find enough volunteers. Since he didn't say that yes, they are mercenaries, I inferred that he wasn't four-square against the mendacious rationalizations of those who seek to shape the public's awareness with lies and disingenuous constructions. I see now that I was wrong and that AKMA is quieter and gentler than I am, but certainly as clear in his understanding and doubtlessly more persuasive with a broader audience.

If my inability to sort what you were saying caused you discomfort AKMA, I apologize.

Actually, yes, as I understand it, technically, you can't be "mercenaries" for your own government. It means more than just "not regular military and gets paid". There's an aspect of *foreign* service with no tie other than money. That is, if you're a citizen of Fredonia working for a Fredonian corporation proving "support services" for the Fredonian military, and both you and the company are pretty clearly Fredonians in good standing, that's "contractor", not "mercenary".

In fact, the terminology is part of an authorative taxonomy, not a folksonomy 1/2 :-).

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No biggie, Frank.

Seth, that's fascinating. Do you suppose the limitation "foreign" derives from the presupposition that a government wouldn't need to use its own citizens as [quasi-]mercenaries? Does the definition unduly restrict usage in this case, since (as David and Frank point out) the Blackwater gunslingers -- oops, and I just remembered hearing that Prince made the emphatic point that they hire people from various different countries, so some are mercenaries even under the restrictive definition -- but the professional non-governmental army is being used as mercenaries, in the same way that one might hire a battalion of Hessians or Swiss cavalry?

I work for the USMC as a "contractor." I work in a library at a US base, but there are thousands of contractors doing all kinds of jobs.

I think Blackwater employees are also called contractors simply because it's easier to refer to ALL contractors as that and not some contractors by one name and others by something else.

Nothing sinister or misleading, as far as I can figure.

AKMA, regarding "government wouldn't need to use its own citizens as [quasi-]mercenaries", no, I don't think that's the reason at all. Almost the opposite, that it's considered important to distinguish between for-profit citizens and for-profit foreigners. It's just that in the modern world, we don't have nearly the same proportion of for-profit citizen quasi-military as used to be the case in earlier times. For-profit citizen navy was a big deal a few hundred years ago, and the US Constitution even has a specific clause saying Congress can do that ("grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal"). The word was "privateer".

A case could be made that Blackwater is "paramilitary", though that has connotations of independent command structure. "Paramilitary contractors" might be the best terminology.

How about outlaws or hired guns?

The above discussion on nuances of names is fascinating to me as a linguistic issue, as of course, names matter in the court of public opinion. But it seems totally to ignore the most morally reprehensible aspect -- to me, at least -- of the Blackwater security forces in Iraq: the fact that they seemed to be subject to no rule of law -- not the UMCJ nor Iraqi law and until the recent legislation in Congress, apparently not even U.S. law.

Er, make that UCMJ? Anyhow, the same rules as our military operate under.

Seth is correct. Technically, mercenary means "paid foreign fighter."

Oxford's Dictionary - "a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army."

As their name states, they're "Blackwater USA." Homegrown mercenaries apparently need new nomenclature.

There is precedent: the sometimes-treacherous private armies of Renaissance Italy were known as "condotierri," which is simply Italian for "contractors." (If Blackwater CEO Erik Prince suddenly changes sides in the middle of battle, after a better offer from Osama bin Laden, then we'll know that the return to traditional values is indeed nearly complete.)