Getting to know our foreign policy mechanisms….
Last night (June 5th) Bill Moyers interviewed investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill on the role of mercenaries in the current war in Afghanistan. It was an interesting interview, particularly in light of the speech given by President Barack Obama in Cairo. The following is an excerpt of the Moyers/Scahill interview:
BILL MOYERS: So, step back to that issue of military contractors. You’ve been you’ve been writing about privatization and military contractors for a long time. In the large scheme of things what do you military contractors represent to you?
JEREMY SCAHILL:Yeah. Well, I think that what we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war. Where you no longer have to depend exclusively on your own citizens to sign up for the military and say, “I believe in this war, so I’m willing to sign up and risk my life for it.” You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars. In the process of doing that you undermine U.S. democratic processes. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, ’cause you’re making their citizens in combatants in a war to which their country is not a party. I feel that the end game of all of this could well be the disintegration of the nation state apparatus in the world. And it could be replaced by a scenario where you have corporations with their own private armies. To me, that would be a devastating development. But it’s on. It’s happening on a micro level. And I fear it will start to happen on a much bigger scale.
Is this the Bush legacy of military privatization, in which private corporations gain lucrative contracts to conduct our foreign policy? See the entire interview from Bill Moyers’ Journal by clicking here! Or visit the show at “http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06052009/watch.html”