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| Capers in Kabul | | Print | |
| Written by Becky Akers | ||||||||
| Wednesday, 09 September 2009 08:37 | ||||||||
Donald Rumsfeld with troops at the embassy in Afghanistan. Brace yourself for a shock: Americans whom the Federal government has billeted abroad are sinning so shamelessly we might mistake them for politicians. Again. This time, it’s not soldiers like Pvt. Lynndie England and Specialist Charles Graner sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners; it’s guards at the American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, humiliating each other. Thereafter, the differences diminish. These deviants photographed their escapades, just as those at Abu Ghraib did. And their pictures, too, have zipped around the world. Apparently, our government is not content to alienate foreign folks by bombing their villages and slaughtering their children; it also posts perverts among them lest any doubts remain that American culture is a bottomless sewer.
Unless you’re one of Hollywood’s devotees, the descriptions of the guards’ orgies are nauseating enough, let alone the pictures. Naked men cavorting around a fire, openly urinating on camera, snacking on nacho chips placed in another man’s hindquarters, slurping vodka as it’s poured down his back to run off those same quarters… No wonder neoconservatives rely on the armed forces to foist “American values” on the world: even most Americans reject this filth.
The culprits don’t work directly for the Feds; rather, a private company called ArmorGroup North America subcontracts them to the State Department for its embassy. In other words, the State Department “privatized” the embassy’s security.
Reports of this story stress the privatization, but it’s an insignificant detail. Whether U.S. soldiers guard an embassy or a private firm fills those positions matters as little as whether you hire a hit man directly or call the Mob. Whoever guards the embassy takes his orders and parameters from the Pentagon; both soldiers and private contractors mortify those of us paying the bills with their Federally encouraged brutality, crudity, and swagger. There may be minor variations in discipline, procedure, and training, but the result is the same: soldiers and contractors are building a military empire most natives deeply resent — even if their politicians welcome it thanks to the “foreign aid” with which the Feds bribe them.
“Privatization” is not only irrelevant, it’s also a misnomer. There’s nothing “private” about these corrupt arrangements because the free market isn’t operating here: government’s force smothers it.
The market’s essence is liberty, with participants voluntarily associating and trading for their own betterment. But government’s essence is force. Its brute, physical compulsion strangles the market’s freedom anytime business becomes government’s partner.
Sadly, the State’s evil not only survives this crime, it flourishes. Circumstances spring from a free market’s liberty that naturally protect consumers far more effectively than a bureaucrat’s regulations ever could. For instance, a company that doesn’t serve consumers courteously will insult its way to bankruptcy. But taxes flood government’s coffers regardless of its behavior; when it pays a contractor with this loot, neither has any incentive to treat us well. And when we protest, Leviathan smugly shrugs: it’s all the “private” company’s fault; clearly, government must regulate the cold, cruel market. Meanwhile, in this particular instance, the Feds’ management was as inept as always: “deficiencies” in the guards’ performance stretch back over the last two years, with the State Department turning a blind eye and refusing to cancel ArmorGroup’s $189 million contract. Coincidentally, no doubt, ArmorGroup is a subsidiary of the politically entwined Wackenhut Corp., which is owned in turn by the multi-national G4S.
Privatization has become a red herring as statists on both the left and right increasingly emphasize it. Leftists correctly deplore it for its union of government with business but wrongly blame the market for barbarities like that in Kabul. Rightists hope that the market’s efficiency will “improve” government – as though improving rather than eliminating ought to be the goal. They, too, fail to understand that the market’s blessings go missing in privatization.
Whether it’s U.S. soldiers or “private” guards prancing naked on their off-duty hours is another red herring, albeit an especially rotten and revolting one. The real question is why our rulers steal taxes from us for an embassy in the first place. Indeed, let’s enlarge our query to the entire State Department: why does it exist? Why should the Feds expect to milk us of $16.3 billion in FY2010 alone for this boondoggle?
Like the rest of the presidential Cabinet, the State Department has no constitutional basis. Rather, the founding document “gave the President responsibility for the conduct of the nation's foreign relations,” as even the State Department’s Office of the Historian admits. And indeed, Article II, Section 2 prescribes that the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, … and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls…” Yet our Historian alleges that “it soon became clear … an executive branch was necessary to support President Washington in the conduct of the affairs of the new Federal Government.” And so the first Congress remedied the Constitution’s oversight, as have so many Congresses since with so many other oversights: it created a Department of Foreign Affairs in July 1789.
Given the executive branch’s extremely limited power in foreign affairs – even “regulat[ing] Commerce with foreign Nations” had been left to Congress – its new bureau soon became a catch-all for such domestic tasks as “management of the Mint, keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, and the taking of the census.” By September, Congress had renamed it the Department of State.
Contrast those constrained beginnings with how State sees its current role:
[You might think promoting peace and stability in Washington, DC, would keep these bozos busy enough.]
[And here you thought entrepreneurs created jobs, you silly taxpayer, you!]
[Which the Feds promptly destroy by imposing tariffs on countries that beat American companies on price and service.]
[This from a Department that can’t even police its own frat boys in Kabul.] Nor is that all: State’s employees also engage in the usual diplomatic blather, endless talking, and posturing – but it takes the Department five bullet points of jargon to say so. “…[D]iplomacy can work,” claims Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “…to achieve results that advance our security, interests and values.” We ought to fear that as much as Afghanis do.
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Comments (2)
Kenneth Creech
said:
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... Becky it seems to me you are extremely astute at describing deficiencies in the fedgov. Perhaps we could use your expertise in educating elected office holders before their swearing in ceremony. Apparently it could not hurt most of them. Thanks to you for your keen observations. |
danwhitehead1
said:
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I repeat - - - - - - the entire government, from the local all the way DOWN to the fedgov, is totally corrupt, vile and detestable. All the pigs and swine are now in all the capitol cities and, of course, that vile, noxious swamp known as Washington DC, rather in the wallows on the farms where they belong. The whole thing needs to be struck down and rebuilt. It is a shame and a reproach. |
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