That Time Blackwater and US Army Shot Each Other Up

It’s June 2006, the height of the Iraq War. Luckily for you, you’re not an orphan in Fallujah, but just another suburbanite in Fayetteville, North Carolina. It’s a sleepy summer Saturday morning. As you’re browsing the morning paper, your child is flipping channels. As he does so you catch half a second of a Bush speech. You’d normally never subject yourself to a Dubya speech, but this is unusual — why would the President be giving a speech at such an early hour? You tell the kid to switch back and your jaw drops.

Bush says that amid a tough and existential struggle against terrorism, a new Benedict Arnold has emerged to stab the nation in the back, to bring anarchy, fratricide, surrender and defeat. In light of that, Bush has issued orders to the DoD to deal harshly with this deadly internal threat. All who have taken up arms against the United States in this criminal and traitorous adventure consciously will answer to the people and be punished.

What the hell is going on? Civil war??? Bush mentions Blackwater and that Savannah has fallen but offers no specifics. You scramble to the internet to find out what’s going on.

Turns out Blackwater is patrolling the streets of Savannah, has set up checkpoints around the city, and has even cordoned off the 4-star US Army general in the nearby Fort Stewart HQ along with his staff, effectively subjecting him to house arrest. What is more, 4000 Blackwaterites are marching up north from Savannah toward Arlington and Washington. Their stated goal is subjecting DoD chief Donald Rumsfeld to the same sort of house arrest and forcing his dismissal, but speculation is rife they’re hoping their dash to the capital area destabilizes and topples Bush himself.

This might normally be called a mutiny, but seeing Blackwater is a separate organization from the US military, and a private one at that, the proper term is a coup. Like some hapless Panamanian, you now have the dubious privilege of watching the progress of a coup in motion against your national government in real-time. A coup that will determine your future, and of your country, and that you’re helpless to influence. Unthinkable! What has this country sunk to?!

As you try to follow the advance of the Blackwater column on the interwebs, the news comes in. The mercenaries have shot down a US Army helicopter. And another. And another. US Army deaths are almost certain. And in an hour or two the private army will be passing through your Fayetteville.

Indeed, just as they enter your town they blow out a USAF surveillance plane out of the sky above it, as videos of the incident that hit your Facebook soon confirm. The fuckers! You aren’t even that much of a support-the-troops guy, you were never for the war in the first place, you backed Howard Dean. But this is too much! Somebody is killing US military men right on US soil — and it’s a fucking corporation!

You never thought you’d say this but this is one Bush war you’re going to support! Dubya, go and ring Erik Prince’s neck! Crush these merc killers of troops! Sure, after it’s done Bush will have to answer for allowing the situation to get so far from under him, and for getting in bed with these entitled criminals in the first place, but for now, he needs to do as promised and unleash the Pentagon against these murder yuppies!

Your first foray into backing a Bush war does not go too well. As far as you can see resistance to Blackwater consists of local mayors taking the initiative to improvise makeshift roadblocks, and Army engineers reportedly blowing up a few bridges. There are a few videos of what seems to be an aircraft targeting the Blackwater column, but it appears others were downed “preemptively” without ever firing on the mercenaries. There is talk of a “defensive line” being constructed but that is only at Washington outskirts. If after the jaw-dropping “stab in the back” speech you expected a Bush hammer to come down on Blackwater there isn’t one in sight, which allows the 4000-merc column to cover 1000 km from Savannah to Virginia, coming within 300 km of the capital, mainly unopposed.

Instead, come evening, the exact opposite news hits. After the mediation of Tony Blair an agreement has been reached and Bush, the United States government, Erik Prince and Blackwater are back to being friends and back in business. Blackwater recruitment billboards that authorities had started to take down are being put right back up, and the Blackwater skyscraper in New York that was closed by the police is right back to being open again.

What the bloody hell?! After that speech on how the wartime backstabbers will face the punishment of the people? After the Blackwaterites shot up to half a dozen US aircraft, killing at least a dozen US airmen in a day?? They’re going right back on the taxpayer payroll?? What kind of a godawful banana republic is this?!?

Read the rest at Anti-Empire’s Substack: LINK

(It’s a bunch of work to copy this to two places, time better spent researching.)