I am advising Blackwater regarding the Messy World concept. Here is a new blog related to this often maligned organization. This is how I have set up the welcome post:
Welcome to this blog where I will do our best to tell the stories of what it is like to be a contractor to show you the world that they live in. The Messy World
Until now everything on the web about Blackwater has been written about by others. My purpose is to add their story and their face to the larger debate of the complex or Messy World that we live in.
On this blog, I will not rant or make counterpoints to every new attack or rumor. I will do our best to show you who they are and what they do. I will do my best to show you the reality of the world that they have to work in. I will do my best to be fair and broadminded.
I am going to do our best to keep the comments open.
In so doing, I also ask that you too act and speak in a civil way. I don’t ask that you agree or support us - but I do ask that you do not act as trolls. So my commitment is to keep the site open to debate but I will have to ban people who cannot be civil.
Welcome again
Why would I take on such an assignment?
On September 17th I got a call from a very good friend, who is the last person that I would accuse of being a "Cowboy" or a "Hired Gun". As far as I know he also has no tattoos. I had met Joe at the John Boyd conference in Maine a few years ago. Joe, a retired Navy Commander and naval aviator, has been working for Blackwater for nearly two years.
Joe asked me if I could help Blackwater respond to the Tsunami of rage that confronted them.
As in "Dell Hell" - if you say nothing and if you do not participate in the conversation, others will fill in the blanks. Blackwater has a Navy Seal/Special Forces culture that never talks. The State Department also had insisted that they keep silent. Blackwater were silent and keeping mum was what I learned later, SOP.
All I could see as I scanned the web was a mass of comment that made it clear that Blackwater had to be the organization from hell indeed. All the comment was like this and any piece of news would have a bitter and angry tag attached to it. As with Dell and Kryptonite, others had defined who and what they are. As far as I could see, they had to be a terrible group of people who took joy in being "bad".
I knew that Joe was a fine man, but what about the people he worked for? If I was going to help, I had to know more. So I went down to Moyock to meet the folks there and to make up my own mind whether this was a group of people that I wanted to risk my own reputation to work for.
For if I was to become involved, it could not be a secret. I wondered how it would seem that a person who was a out and out libertarian and whose greatest joy was his work in Public Radio and TV could take on such an assignment? My children and my wife, who were exposed to the same daily waves of outrage, were nervous of my even exploring the situation.
I made two visits to Moyock and I have met a lot of people there. I can be taken in by individuals. I have been before and I will again I am sure. But I am good at reading organizations. It's what I do best.
So whom did I meet? I met a lot of good people. I discovered an organization that was very personal and personable. Very not bureaucratic. Very open in their own way. I learned a great deal about where they came from. I learned about the essence of the world that they work in. I heard their stories. After many days of interaction, I decided to help.
So Rob, I can hear you ask, while they may be good men and women, what about what they do?
Here are my answers. I don't have to convince you - I am merely stating my own beliefs.
I know that they have the most dangerous job in the most dangerous place on the planet. This is not like driving around in a suburb of a small town in the US. Nor is the enemy conveniently in uniform and conveniently is clearly recognized positions. Nor is the government of Iraq a noble experiment in democracy.
But what about the big moral questions? Why can't the US Army do this job? Why do we pay contractors to do it? Who makes the rules of engagement? Why are they so aggressive? What is the supervision (huge and complex by the way)? etc. These are questions I believe that have to be asked of State and DOD. Blackwater is an actor in a huge drama. They are neither the playwright or the director.
As I have canvassed some friends about my choice, many have focused on the issue of it being wrong to pay contractors to do a soldier's job. This appears to me to be at the heart of the moral issue that many feel strongly about.
My answer is this.
I have a vision of how the world is today that I call "The Messy World". In the Messy World, our large institutions in the west can no longer serve those that they purport to serve. Health, Education, Police - even the military itself that plans to fight the Russians or China in WWIII but finds itself fighting insurgents. Our institutions have become the core problem of our society. They consume vast resources and cannot do their job. This is deeply unsettling for all of us that have put our trust in them. A consequence is that we increasingly seek to pay others to do their job. While we don't mind paying doctors or teachers or security guards, we have a profound problem with paying soldiers.
In the Messy World, there are also many "States" that we give the name and the hopes of States to, but that are in reality Kleptocracies where a small elite run the place for their own exclusive benefit. Failed states where boys with no hope become terrorists. We wish that this was not true. We wish that this problem will not become our problem. But it is our problem. At the moment we don't know what to do about it and we don't have the will or the capability to act. So we feel guilty and resentful.
Our world does not work any more and I think that deep down we all know this. Surely this must be someone's fault?
My bottom line is that I believe that Blackwater has become the Scapegoat for all of this unease and fear.
So finally this is why I choose to help.
Many years ago, when I was 10 and at a boarding school in England, I was part of a group of boys that decided that one of the boys was "bad". We ganged up on him and beat him up. A great teacher, Tony Webb, told us that we had committed a terrible sin. I have never forgotten the lesson that he taught me.
The sin that we see "out there" is always the sin that is "In here". Didn't Jesus say something about this?
This for me is the moral issue that I take exception to. Everyone has become sucked into this witch hunt. Everyone casually accepts that Blackwater have to be villains and think nothing of using epithets of shame and blame. Few who speak like this, and there are thousands, has ever met anyone from Blackwater. Few have any facts at hand.
No one is prepared to hear any facts. All want to hear only the Cowboy Story.
In this atmosphere it is dangerous to speak out. If you speak out, you must yourself be a villain or a fool. So this is why I speak publicly. When it becomes too dangerous to speak, then that is the underlying moral issue for me. I wonder was it like this during the McCarthy era? Hey those Commies were so easy to hate.
I think that the facts - such as they are - mean nothing. Something else is going on. This is no debate. Debate is not allowed. Facts are ignored. Interests are ignored. We don't want to know the facts.
The issues of the Messy World - our fears, confusion and shame - are real and they are legitimate. But if we simply offload them onto a Scapegoat, then we can ignore them and do nothing about them. The hard road is to see these issues for what they are.
So what am I going to do?
My advice to Blackwater is that they need to offer their own voice, to tell their own stories about who they are and to engage with those that are prepared to think.
The blog site is a start. My role is to teach them how to do this themselves. I begin this job by teaching by showing. Over the next few months it is my hope that they will find their own voice and that you will hear and see their world.
For a society that never spoke out out loud, this is quite a step. If silence is your way, then BUDS is nothing compared to speaking out.
My hope is that a few people who care about justice will have an open mind. My hope is that a real debate among a few good people may then become possible. A debate about the real threats to our world and to our way of life. My dearest hope is that when we care to see what is behind all of this rage, we might even begin to see a path for legitimate action.
A few weeks ago, my dear sister Diana told me to step up. With a certain amount of fear - I follow her advice.
