The Steadily Emerging Police State

In another wonderful of example of the left being able to ask really good questions, Jeremy Scahill writes for The Nation today on the role of mercenaries from companies like Blackwater to help “keep order” in post-Katrina New Orleans:

Blackwater is not alone. As business leaders and government officials talk openly of changing the demographics of what was one of the most culturally vibrant of America’s cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) are fanning out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions. Within two weeks of the hurricane, the number of private security companies registered in Louisiana jumped from 185 to 235. Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which are under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers.

With President Bush using the Katrina disaster to try to repeal Posse Comitatus (the ban on using US troops in domestic law enforcement) and Blackwater and other security firms clearly initiating a push to install their paramilitaries on US soil, the war is coming home in yet another ominous way. As one Blackwater mercenary said, “This is a trend. You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.”

No honest, decent libertarian should think that “private” security like this is anything to cheer. This is no different than stupid arguments over privatizing garbage collection while still maintaining the monopoly. Truly “private” initiatives would accept that armed people would have made their own arrangements to guard their property. In some instances, that would mean hiring companies like these. But in others, it would mean forming ad hoc militias. And clearly, those would not be allowed. Normal, average, ordinary people are not, under any circumstances, to be allowed to do anything for themselves. Especially if it involves defending themselves.

Being “deputized” by government, as some of the Blackwater folks told Scahill they had been, is the same as retaining the state monopoly on the use of force while merely putting a “private” label on it. It’s all part of this nonsensical contractor state — government by contract management — that has been evolving with gusto since Clinton’s era. It may be a pretty, “private” glove, though it still covers the state’s fist.

I agree we’re going to see more of this. The men hired by these firms feel little love or respect for other human beings and are useful to the state because I suspect they’ll kill when they’re told and like it. Their loyalty is only to their paycheck and their contract, and they have no “fellow citizens.” While sadists do become police officers, you still at least have a fighting chance, especially with a metropolitan police force, of finding someone who became a cop because he or she really wants to help people. But decent human beings do not become mercenaries.

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1:09 pm on September 22, 2005