Prairie Voice

By Dan Kenney
No Private Armies
December 19, 2009

Recently I gave a talk to a group of democrats about the danger of outsourcing our security to private military and security companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and others. Part of my talk includes looking at the profits made by pentagon contractors such as Raytheon, Boeing, KBR, etc.. During the questions and comments portion the chair of the committee said, “By your definition of military contractor I would be one, I have worked for Raytheon for over 35 years.”

He said that I should not include Raytheon in with Blackwater. “Raytheon is a good company that provides what our soldiers need, they are nothing like Blackwater.” In a sense he was saying that Raytheon was a “good” military contractor and that Blackwater was a bad one. I have given this talk many times and this is the first time someone challenged me with the possibility that there are “good” war profiteers and there are bad.
The next person to speak said that she agreed with the chair and she felt it was not a good idea to take on these companies right now with the economy the way it is, because “they provide a lot of jobs.” She implied these multi-billion dollar companies that make their money from war are “good” companies to have because of the employment they provide. .

On my drive home I puzzled over what they had said. Could it be that I should present the information about pentagon contractors like Boeing and Raytheon in a separate program? So I decided I needed to take a closer look at Raytheon.
I learned that Raytheon, which means “light from the gods,” is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world and the fourth largest in the United States, with annual revenues of over $20 billion. More than 90 percent of Raytheon’s revenues were obtained from defense contracts. Many of their contracts with the U.S. defense department are “no bid contracts.”

Raytheon is the maker of “Bunker Buster” bombs, Tomahawk and Patriot missiles. Raytheon manufactured the missile that killed 62 civilians, most of them women and children, in a Baghdad market in 2003. Hundreds of Raytheon million dollar cruise missiles have been fired on Afghanistan killing more untold hundreds of civilians. The Tomahawk missiles were used during “shock and awe” in 2003 killing hundreds in Iraq.
The missile that killed 62 in a Baghdad market on a Friday night in 2003 had been manufactured in Texas. Apparently it malfunctioned and did not hit its intended target.

The company refused to take responsibility for the malfunction.
In 2009 Raytheon came out with the “Silent Guardian” or Active Denial System (ADS). It is designed to protect military personnel against small-arms fire without the use of lethal force. Transmitted at the speed of light over a 700 yard distance, the “Pain-Ray” as it is also known, is a millimeter-wave beam that penetrates 1/64th of an inch beneath the skin, causing the water molecules to bubble, producing an intense burning sensation, compared to that of a red hot iron. It has been referred to as the “Holy Grail of crowd control.”
Like Blackwater Raytheon has also had its share of rule violations and illegal behavior. Raytheon has paid millions of dollars in fines for illegal activities. Some of the fines were paid in settlements for several cases of overpricing and inflated costs. Other fines followed guilty pleas for illegally obtaining secret Air Force budget and planning documents and for submitting false claims for work done on missiles.

Raytheon is also fighting a civil action suit that was filed by over 1,000 property owners in St. Petersburg, Fla. The resident accuse Waltham, Mass. based Raytheon of polluting the soil and groundwater around its St. Petersburg, Fla.
So it appears that there are many similarities between Blackwater and Raytheon after all.

What about the jobs? Raytheon does employ over 80,000 workers worldwide. Boeing has over 155,000 and GE over 320,000. CACI employs over 12,000, Dyncorp another 15,000.and Triple Canopy has over 2,000 in Iraq alone. Blackwater’s information about how many they employ is difficult to find, however Gary Jackson former president of Blackwater said in an interview back in 2007 that they had a list of over 25,000 contractors. There is no question that these pentagon contractor companies provide employment, after-all this is what the “military industrial complex” is all about. The issue of employment, the livelihood of millions depending upon the creation of weapons, distributing weapons, on and on; this is the heart of the problem with creating an economy based on war. However we need to face the fact that an economy that is based on weapons and war is not sustainable; in fact it may lead to our own destruction.

One must ask where is the line to be drawn separating the one who drops the bomb from the one who helps create or manufacture the bomb? Is one less responsible for the death of those innocent individuals killed? Is one who works for a company that manufactures the missiles that kill the children less responsible for their deaths? Are those who have their tax dollars pay for the missiles any less responsible for the killings by the missiles? If it were not for our tax dollars how would our government pay the war profiteers? And if my tax dollars are among those used to pay for the missile am I not also responsible in some way? Are we not all responsible in some way for what is done in our names?
It is these questions that lead to an impasse as we struggle for a world without war profiteers: a world of peace instead of one of war.

I have answered one question for myself however, and that is I will continue to talk about Raytheon and Boeing, and the other companies who profit from war in the same presentation as Blackwater and other private military security companies. I have yet to find a “good” war profiteer.

We All Need To Rethink Afghanistan
By Dan Kenney
10/17/09

President Obama is not the only one who should be using this time to rethink the strategy for Afghanistan. All Americans should be engaged in debate about this war and where it may lead. After all it is the people who will pay. We will pay with our tax dollars, our loved ones, our democracy, our country’s reputation, and our hopes. This war has the potential to destroy the Obama presidency just as Vietnam buried LBJ’s 45 years ago.
We often hear about the high cost of the health care reform bill, the latest price tag being touted is $900 billion over the next 10 years, yet we don’t hear how we have spent $921 billion on the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 8 years. We are expected to spend another $130 billion in 2010, and if Obama makes the choice to increase the number of troops that amount will climb higher. How many citizens could we insure with the over $2 billion per week we are spending on the wars?
These are also wars that the majority of citizens on both sides of the ocean oppose. According to a recent CNN poll 57% of Americans are opposed to the Afghanistan war. An ABC poll conducted this year found that the majority of Afghans blame the U.S. more than the Taliban for the strife in their country. At the same time a 2009 AP poll reported that 63% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq. It is clear that the wars are not wanted by the majority of the people in the U.S., Iraq, or Afghanistan. It’s time to listen to the people and for the people to listen to themselves.
President Obama tells us we must secure Afghanistan so it can no longer be a safe haven for al Qaeda. However experts on the country and our own intelligence reports tell us that al Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan, and are now based in Pakistan. The people of Pakistan, 59% according to polls, share al Qaeda’s attitudes toward the U.S.
Al Qaeda is an international movement. They exist in Indonesia, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The al Qaeda even has enclaves in England and France. We cannot defeat them by increasing troops in a country they have abandoned. The various al Qaeda groups have different goals and strategies they are linked only by their resentment toward the Western military, culture, political and corporate power. Al Qaeda doesn’t need Afghanistan so why do we?
Next we are told that we need to protect the Afghans from the Taliban. This is dangerously familiar to our stumbling into the ancient ethnic hatreds of Iraq and Vietnam that we knew nothing about. The other problem with this reasoning is that the Taliban is not a unified group. There are many bands that refer to themselves as Taliban. The groups are mostly illiterate farmers, former anti-Soviet fighters, roving bandits, and drug traffickers. There is not one large organized Taliban force. The Taliban is dangerous, of course, and especially so for its brutal treatment of women and young girls. But not every member is barbaric, many are moderate. We should be working with the moderate ones to wipe out the barbaric ones.
The Taliban is not interested in attacking the U.S. nor are they capable of doing so even if they wanted to. The primary goal of the Taliban, which is mostly made up of Pashtuns, is to regain power. As long as we continue to side with their enemies we will find ourselves trapped in an endless civil war.
Also by becoming embroiled in their civil war we have sided with Karzai, which puts us at odds with over 40% of the country’s population. It also aligns us with his corruption and stolen elections.
The claim that we are there to train the Afghan army is also a faulty plan. The Afghan army is very poorly trained, poorly equipped, incompetent, and lacking any will to fight. The police forces are the same as well as openly corrupt. Mark Moyar, a national security analyst with the U.S. Marine Corps points out that doubling the Afghan troops will not double the security because there are not enough properly trained commanders to lead them. Also it is widely known that it takes “at least 10 years to turn raw soldiers into officers suitable for essential commands.”
Added to all of this is the fact that we will also be increasing our use of private military contractors with all the danger that entails. For the past two years over 65% of the Pentagon force in Afghanistan has been private military contractors.
Given the facts and not the hype, it becomes clear that this war is a dead end path that could not only bring down Obama’s presidency but also our own country. We cannot continue down this dangerous road while our own infrastructure crumbles here at home, or while we continue to sacrifice our security with loan after loan from the Chinese.
We all need to seize this moment to rethink what role we want our country to play in the world. We need organize the majority that wants these wars to stop and create the change we want to see. We cannot stand by passively allowing those few who reap profits from these wars drive us further down the path to our own destruction. As the Chinese proverb warns, “If we do not change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.”